


First Sight

by BlackDeath



Series: The Sight Series [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Gen, Middle Earth, Multi, Other, Romance, STOP READING THE TAGS AND GO READ THE STORY, Slow Burn, The Hobbit - Freeform, Tolkien, kili - Freeform, kiliel - Freeform, tauriel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 13:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2694224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackDeath/pseuds/BlackDeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tauriel's grandmother Adanethael had the gift of Sight. When Tauriel loses everything, she no longer believes in fate. But the arrival of thirteen dwarves, and one very charming dwarf in particular forces her to choose between a life she knows, and the uncertain path before her.  Kili x Tauriel (FINISHED: See end notes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unexpected Arrest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel helps Legolas arrest a band of trespassing dwarves. Thranduil broods.

"Throw me your dagger! Quick!”

The dwarf shouted his command, swearing in his native tongue as the spider hurtled towards them. Tauriel caught a glimpse of his terrified face before turning her back on him just as another crashed down from the overgrowth.

“If you think I’m giving you a weapon, dwarf, you’re mistaken.”

She moved with deadly efficiency, the daggers she carried an extension of herself, embedding the first into the skull of the spider hissing before her and throwing the second through the air, the blade arching past the dwarf’s ear before finding its mark. The spider’s flesh quivered with the thunder of a mountain falling, skidding to a halt where they both stood.

The dwarf’s eyes widened.

The trees quieted. Tauriel could no longer hear their whispers. Now it was the clanking of armor and the scathing insults of a furious band of dwarves that resumed the din on the forest floor. Across the short distance that separated them, she heard Legolas’ voice.

“Search them,” he ordered.

“ _Nenu nogal_ ,” she added, eyeing the proximity of a particularly brutish-looking dwarf who was staring holes through him.

The guards confiscated the trespassers’ weapons, herding them into a tight circle and binding their hands. Legolas went over to a dwarf that looked as if he had been born with a sour taste in his mouth, a nest of red hair darker than Tauriel’s own covered his head and chin. Legolas plucked out a square of filigreed metal that stuck out of his pocket.

“Give it back, that’s private!” the sour-faced dwarf cried.

“Who is this? Your brother?” Legolas opened the square of metal that contained a portrait of his kin.

“That is my wife,” the dwarf bit out.

“And what is this horrid creature? Goblin mutant.”

“That’s my wee lad, Gimli!”

Legolas’ brow vaulted over his forehead.

He sneered and handed the portrait back to the dwarf, walking to where Tauriel waited, his silver hair standing out against the shadows of the wood.

“ _Dirth gon ungol ben_?” he asked.

“ _En ornier ungol einier ure_ ,” she said. “ _Neng hae in yeh_.”

Legolas sighed. The sound was meant for her ears alone.

 _More will come._ Spiders, orcs, the rot that had overtaken the forests of her ancestors—it all originated from the same source. A darkness there had been whisperings of, uncoiling itself into the heart of the land.

She considered the thirteen dwarf captives, a motley group of strangers, each distinct in appearance, wearing an assortment of rusted armor and boiled leather. They scowled and muttered amongst themselves, preoccupied by the presence of Legolas as he questioned their leader, the one who had called himself Thorin Oakenshield. It would not do well for this Thorin or his companions that he had been found in possession of an elven blade. Tauriel wondered if their arrival in Mirkwood would prove another bad omen for her people.

As she brooded, she became aware of a pair of eyes on her. It was the young dwarf whom she had saved. She straightened her spine and stared hard at him. Whatever it was that he had seen must have made an impression. As Legolas gave the order and he and his company were marched off, Tauriel was the first to break their gaze, though not before she noticed his wink, a wide grin stretching the sides of his mouth.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Where are you taking Thorin?” The elder dwarf asked. Tauriel heard one of the others refer to him as Balin on their way to the palace.

“He will have an audience with the king,” she said, leading them down the damp path that opened into the dungeons.

“King Thranduil?” Another dwarf with hair like a three-pointed star gaped in awe.  

"There is only one Elven King in these woods, lad," The elder answered for her.

The mute dwarf with an axe lodged in his skull spluttered and growled, shoving against the handling of the guards. Tauriel wondered how horrible the injury must have looked when it had still been fresh.

“What does he want with him?” The brutish dwarf with skin markings on his bald head demanded, wearing the same fierce scowl that he had trained earlier on Legolas.

“That is King Thranduil's concern.”

“He better not hurt him,” A fat dwarf menaced.

“Elves have no honor!” One with white hair—Tauriel didn’t know which, there were two of them standing side by side—announced waspishly.

“Aye, Dori. That’s what Thorin’s been sayin’ all along—"

“If we had stayed on the road we wouldn’t have gotten into this mess—“

“—We _couldn’t_ stay on the road because of the _elves_ , nitwit! Do you still think they would have let us stroll merrily through their woods? They wouldn’t have admitted us through these lands if we’d come in on our knees begging—"

A dull ache started behind Tauriel’s eyes. She made a motion for her guardsmen to separate and take the dwarves to their cells. The guards traded long-suffering glances.

“What will we do if Thorin is executed? Who will—"

“ _Quiet_ , moron! You want these lichen-eating elves to know everything? They’ll all have us murdered—"

“ _Devoured_ —"

“—by animals!”

“I’ll take my chances. Nothing could be worse than those spiders...”

The noise of their argument died as the number of dwarves in Tauriel’s presence blessedly dwindled to two, both the youngest of their group. The one she had saved was one of them. The fair-haired dwarf that looked as if he were a blood relation regarded her with open contempt.

“I just want you to know,” he said, drawing himself to his full diminutive height, “That if you or the rest of your flower-tickling elves mean to harm my uncle, I’ll—”

“ _Flower-tickling_ , Fili?” The dwarf she had saved snorted with laughter.

Tauriel exhaled. “I believe King Thranduil only wishes to question your leader for now—if this eases your worry.”

The two dwarves looked at each other.

Another guard came up her flank to take away the fair-haired dwarf. Tauriel nodded her thanks. The dwarf pitched a last distrustful glare over his shoulder before being led down a level to his cell.

 _One left_. Tauriel looked around and grimaced. There were no more guards.

“I guess it’s just you and me,” the dwarf declared brightly, echoing her thoughts.

_Valar give me forbearance._

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The dwarf waited.

And waited.

“That’s…not what I meant.”

“Then why not ask my name?” Tauriel said.

“Alright…what is your name?”

“I do not give it to prisoners.”

The dwarf frowned at her. “What am I to call you, then?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? How lovely. A family name?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Do not call me ‘nothing.’”

“I must call you _something_.”

“Anything but that.”

He grinned. The ache that had started behind Tauriel’s eyes began to throb.

“You may call me Captain.”

“Captain? Captain of what?”

“Of the Mirkwood Forest Guard.”

“Do you mind if I abbreviate?”

They rounded a bend on the narrow bridge, coming to a wider ledge. Tauriel pointed to the cell that had been carved into the side of the sheer rockface.

“This is where you will stay.”

"Could use some throw pillows," he wrinkled his nose. “Do you want to know my name?”

“No.”

“It’s Kili,” he said, smiling and stepping into his cell. His hair was very dark—dark and tangled from many nights spent sleeping near an open flame. Tauriel wondered why he had not braided it like the rest of his companions. He was tall for a dwarf, grazing chest level. The more she observed him, the more she decided he was not quite as young as first appeared. Aware of her scrutiny, he turned and captured her gaze.

“Aren’t you going to search me?” he asked. “I could have anything down my trousers.”

Tauriel regarded him with the serenity of her six hundred years. “Or nothing,” she said, and closed the iron bars.

She did not miss the smirk he cast at her as she walked away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Tauriel.”

Legolas came down from the second bridge, still dressed in armor covered in spider blood. It was not uncommon for him to attend his father before changing out of his soiled clothes. It was rare for royalty to possess such an utter disregard for vanity, but it was a trait Tauriel admired in him that was otherwise viewed as ill-mannered and eccentric by members of the court.

“Why does the dwarf stare at you, Tauriel?”

She blinked at his words. They held an undercurrent of accusation.

“Who can say? Perhaps he is soft-headed.”

Legolas shifted and she immediately regretted the annoyance his tone had provoked in her. It was the tumult of the day—the introduction of the dwarves that had thrown them both off balance.

She smiled and saw him relax. Legolas Greenleaf was not in the habit of returning anyone’s smiles, though Tauriel knew well how to read his goodwill. She inclined her head and made to move past him, thoughts inexplicably straying to her grinning captive.

“He’s quite tall for a dwarf, do you not think?” she asked.

“Taller than some,” he called to her retreating back. “But no less ugly.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Tauriel knew Thranduil’s patience would be frayed by the time she reached the throne. She was grateful to Legolas for paving the way by announcing the capture of the dwarves himself. It wasn’t often that he was able to join Tauriel and her guard on patrol, but this occasion had proved fortuitous. Owing to the unusual nature of their prisoners, Thranduil would be relieved his son had been present to handle the affair.

It wouldn’t help his good spirits that he had just finished interrogating their leader. Tauriel retraced her steps back to the entrance of the dungeon when the guard that had been escorting him gave her a wide berth, the dwarf marching past with regal indifference.

She stopped outside of the throne room, feeling a sensation like someone staring at the back of her neck. She looked around, but there was no one there.

_Peace Tauriel, it has been a long day._

“I know you’re there.” Thranduil stepped around the expanse of a column that divided his throne from view. “Why do you linger in the shadows?”

She stepped forward. He gestured for her to come closer, the white of his robes pooling like water behind him.

“I was coming to report to you,” she said.

“You have taken your time.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Thranduil observed her coldly. Legolas possessed all of the beauty and composure of his sire but lacked the true ice that ran through his veins. She was grateful for it.

“I thought I ordered that nest to be destroyed not two moon’s past?”

She bowed. “We cleared the forest as ordered My Lord, but more spiders keep coming up from the south. They are spawning in the ruins of Dol Ghuldur. If we could kill them at their source—"

“That fortress lies beyond our borders. Keep our lands clear of those foul creatures. That is your task.” Thranduil cut through her words with his own like a knife. It was an old dance between them—each moving in their futile orbits, hoping to press the other into a position of acceptance. It was the same with his son.

“And if we drive them off? What then? Will they spread to other lands?”

A sliver of ice tightened his jaw. “You forget yourself, Captain. Other lands are not my concern.”

Her protest died a swift death on the back of her tongue. He would not indulge her pressing today.

“I see this does not please you.”

It was a question she knew better than to answer. His eyes flashed, a deeper blue than Legolas', the dangerous color of a lake with deep-running currents.

“Fortunes of the world will rise and fall. But here in this kingdom, we will endure.”

She bowed once more and kept her eyes fixed on the floor. He waved his hand and dismissed her. As she turned to go, his words, soft and arrow-like, shot a parting barb through her back.

“Legolas said you fought well today.” His tone was inscrutable. “He has grown very fond of you.”

All at one she sensed herself balancing on the edge of a narrow precipice, unexpected and treacherous. The remark was calculated and she did not know what to make of it.

 _Yes you do_ , an inner voice whispered.

“I assure you, My Lord, Legolas thinks of me as no more than a Captain of the Guard.”

He circled her thoughtfully and glided past, a creature of frost and air.

“Perhaps he did once. Now, I’m not so sure.” She heard the chink of silver behind her as he poured himself another goblet of wine.

Wishes of long ago assailed her, dreams she had believed extinguished. A foolish hope she had kept burning while she still trained as a guard. She had been much younger then, climbing through the trees, stealing glimpses of Prince Legolas—the silver-haired being he had been before he was simply Legolas—hunting with his retinue.

She drew herself away from useless fantasies.

“I…do not think you would allow your son to pledge himself to a lowly Silvan Elf,” she said.

“No, you’re right. I would not.”

A glowing ember that had remained banked inside her heart was quietly snuffed.

“Still, he cares about you. Do not give him hope where there is none.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
>  
> 
> Nenu Nongol: (thoroughly)  
> Dirth gon ungol ben?: (are the spiders dead?)  
> En ornier ungol einier ure: (yes, but more will come)  
> Neng hae in yeh: (they're growing bolder)
> 
>  
> 
> No, I have no idea how to properly transcribe Tolkien Elvish (or Dwarvish and Orcish or any other ish you will see in later chapters.) These translations are a slap-stitch amalgam of Things That Sound Good as well as supposedly "real" words from online Tolkien fan dictionaries. 
> 
> This is a multi-chapter series, the first of which I have already completed. I will post each chapter on a biweekly basis (or maybe more frequently depending on the response I get--hint, hint.) The first half follows the movie fairly closely, though once I see BoFA it will likely branch off into an AU that will chronicle the battle as well as the aftermath. We all know Peter Jackson doesn't have a happy ending for our Killiel in mind, but that doesn't mean I can't make one (or will I?) There is a terrible shortage of good fanfic in this fandom--I think I've read two that I thought were truly well-done--so my goal is to remedy that. We all love the Romeo and Juliet dwarf-elf scenario. The second series will increase to an M rating for violence and other things, so if you're scared of those beasties, watch out. @o@ 
> 
> I'm not in any way, shape, or form a Tolkien purist. While good 'ol Peter Jackson may have turned this glorious franchise into one big cgi cashcow, he's also breathed life into Tolkien's world for me. I've read the Hobbit and was never impressed by his storytelling, though I appreciated his world-building. I tried the Lord of the Rings and found it too dry. So for this, I do have Jackson to thank. 
> 
> Also...I have no qualms about holding this series for ransom. Authors, fanfic or otherwise, live and breathe reviews, so please leave more than a kudos if you can (though kudos are great) if you have read and enjoy this story that has taken weeks to write. Constructive criticism is always helpful and appreciated. Praise never hurts either. ~_+


	2. A Fate Foretold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel dreams of darkness. Kili discovers her in it.

Adanethael had been gifted with the Sight.

Sight was rare among Silvan Elves. The High Elves of the Eldar were known to jealously guard their gifts of prophecy, marrying close within their bloodlines to preserve its strength. If the Low Clans of the Nandor and Avari had concerns for their future they were left to seek their own answers, and it was Tauriel’s _Adaeinior_ they sought out for guidance.

She remembered how, during the Solstice of All Colors of her girlhood, Adanethael had promised to read her and her sister Gannelwen's fates. They had fidgeted with excitement, waiting impatiently for their mother and father to retire. _Adaeinior_ had chided them both, though there had been the sparkle of mischief in her old eyes.

Tauriel took after Adanethael. Like her, she was the only other among her kin to break the line of more than five successive generations of those who had not been born with red hair. But for all of this bad luck and the superstition that was attached to it, her grandmother had been well-respected among her people. Tauriel had often wondered if it would one day be the same for her.

“You first, Ganna.”

Her younger sister extended her hand. Gannelwen was fortunate—she took after their parents, both fair and dark of look. Adanethael had smiled and studied her palm.

“I see laughter and joy in your life; music and water. You will be a dancer, Ganna. Your heart shall be full of singing dreams. You will dance with the enchantments of Nessa. The King himself will call upon you to grace his feasting halls.”

Gannelwen’s face had lit from within, rapt with pleasure. She was already an admirable dancer. It made Tauriel squirm in her seat with envy. Adanethael’s eyes had roamed ponderously between them.

“We must not wish ill upon the happiness seen in the path of another.”

Tauriel flushed with shame.

“Now you, _hên_.”

Tauriel offered her palm. Adanethael took it just as she had with Gannelwen, peering into its etchings and folds.

“I see pain.”

Tauriel’s breath caught like a rabbit in a snare.

“ _Lle naa belegohtar_. You will spill the blood of your enemies but it will come at a price. Yours will be a path of pain, sacrifice…and love.”

Adanethael lingered, smoothing the evil line she traced in Tauriel’s palm with a fingertip. It was as insignificant and thin as a crow’s scratch—deceptive in the cruel trick of fate it had played on her.

“For all of this suffering you shall know the greatest of loves.”

She finished and pulled away. Tauriel felt a great hollow inside herself; as if she had been robbed of something she had not known she possessed. What was the promise of love next to suffering? She lifted her hand to her eyes, but couldn’t see any sign of the wretched life Adanethael had seen that awaited her.

Tauriel glanced to her side at Ganna, sure she would laugh. Two milky eyes stared sightlessly at her. The pale orc that held her head in its fist roared. Adanethael lay mangled on the floor, red hair mingling with the red river that flowed from her throat. The orc saw Tauriel and advanced, curving its massive sword high in the air and bringing it down with all the weight and fury of death.

She woke.

Tauriel rose and filled a wooden bowl with water. She cupped it in her hands and brought it to her face. It did little to wash away the scald of dreams.

She went back to her pallet. She looked at her bow that she had carelessly heaped on the chair with her armor the night before.

 _Lle naa belegohtar._ She had become a warrior—but a great one was debatable. That part of Adanethael’s fate reading had not come true.

_“Run to the trees, Tauriel! Take Gannelwen!”_

There were many things that had not come true.

Tauriel smoothed her fingers over the spun quilt beside her. Her mother had toiled over it long ago, the patterns of their clan woven into the simple fabric. It was one of the few things that were left to her. There would be no others like it. Her talent did not lie with needles.

The old grief cleaved at her, though her eyes were dry. She could no longer weep. The years had left sun-cracked riverbeds in her heart. She had been too young to save them. She could not even save herself.

_They slipped through the small window in their mother and father’s chamber. Tauriel made Gannelwen go first._

_“Quick! I can hear them!”_

_Adanethael had locked the door after she pushed them into the room. Tauriel heard her screams and the black laughter of the orcs on the other side._ _She raged to open the door, to attack her grandmother's murderers with her small bare hands, though she knew the end she met would be the same._

_Tears stormed her cheeks, hazing her vision. Her sister's eyes were wild with terror as she clutched at her hand. They had to escape. But to where? Which direction could they flee?_

_Just a child, Tauriel thought. She’s just a child..._

_And so am I._

_“Atigat!”_

_The orcs shouted. She pulled Gannelwen with her, dashing as swift as Vana through the shade of the towering trees._

_“Thrak mag at kri!”_

Tauriel had been too young then to know what the pale orc bellowed. Now she could never forget.

_Their hulking shapes sprinted after them amid the growing tongues of flame. The smoke billowed into the canopy, a black spire that obscured the stars. She could not see her parents—neither of them were warriors. Her father had run from the dwelling with his sharpest carpentry blade. Her mother was the one who had set the fire to alert the other clans of attack._

_The orcs gained. Tauriel knew they could not outrun them. She saw it in the shivering glow of the light cast over Gannelwen’s face that she did as well._

_“Climb!”_

_They scrabbled up the trees, raking their hands against bark and taking the branches two and more at a time. T_ _he pale orc with the slash in its face drew close. It bared its teeth and grinned up at them like a death’s head, torch blazing in its hand._

_“Shigog na bal.”_

_It_ _threw it at the base of the tree._

_Tauriel’s heart pounded. There were two trees that neighbored on either side of them—the one that was nearest was too far._

_“Leap to the next!” Gannelwen cried._

_“We cannot.”_

_“What can we do? They will burn us!”_

_“We may be able to jump as the tree is felled, but not before. Do not think to—Ganna, stop!”_

_Her sister dropped her clutch at the foot of the branch she stood on and ran and flung herself from its edge as if she would take wing._

_“NO!”_

_A scream that was from far away pierced her ears. For an eternal moment Tauriel thought she was wrong and that her sister had judged the distance correctly; that the tree was much closer than had she guessed, that Ganna would grasp the edge of its furthest jutting branch and pull herself to refuge._

_But she did not._

_The scream she heard was her own. She choked on her cries. Her throat burned as if it had already caught fire before the rest of her._

_The orcs howled with delight. Their shrieks erupted into the night. The pale orc that set the tree ablaze stalked over to where its prize had fallen and lifted its sword to sever proof of its victory. She looked away._

_A stray arrow whizzed by and struck the bark above her head._

_The smoke thickened. More arrows flew and hurtled through the air, true to their targets. Tauriel could barely make out the figures of elves and fleeing orcs below._ _Thranduil’s guard had arrived_ _too late. She could do nothing but watch as the flames rose and engulfed the tree she was trapped in, half blinded by tears and smoke._

 _Another arrow sang out and met the space above her head. This time something thin and taut was attached._ _She felt dizzy. She tried to focus in the direction the arrow had come from, squinting through the suffocating veil of black._

_A young elf, older than her but not yet grown—watched her from one of the high branches of the second closest tree._

_He was very beautiful. Silver-haired and dressed in the finest armor she had ever seen; a sliver of moonlight descended from the sky._ _Tauriel thought he was a vision. He couldn’t be real. Surely she had succumbed, consumed by fire; her burnt remains stuffed into the pale orc’s sack along with her sister’s head._

_She ignored him at first. She was dead and blackened and he was alive—laughing with the moon and stars. What could the living want with the dead but to mock them?_

_His voice cut through the smoke—the sound like rain on her burning skin._

_“Take the rope!”_

_Real, she thought. He's real._

_Her lungs filled with hot ash. Her arms trembled. She fought to keep her eyes open. They were stinging. Her head swam. She wanted to claw and grasp above her head because there was something there, something that she needed, but her body no longer obeyed._

_The beautiful elf said something else but it didn't matter, she couldn't hear._

_As her eyes closed for the last time, arms encircled her. There was the sense that she was flying, plummeting, falling to the earth as Gannelwen had fallen._

_Days later, after Tauriel began to heal and had regained consciousness, she was told she was the sole survivor of her clan; her mother, father, grandmother, and sister had all been killed in the first orc raid in three centuries._

_When she could think of anything beyond the endless vision of her sister dropping like a stone from the sky, and of the pale orc defiling her tiny body with its terrible sword—only then did she ask her healer who it was that had saved her._

_“Prince Legolas,” she had said with kindness, though there had been pity in her eyes._

Legolas had saved her life that day. There were days Tauriel knew that he saved her still.

She readied herself and slipped on her tunic, breastplate and gauntlets. Some of the strength she had felt the previous day began to resurface, the dreams of grief behind for the moment—ebbing only to return like the tide.

Thranduil’s candor yesterday had unsettled her. He was the King of Mirkwood and he had spoken of his speculation over his own son’s regard for her with such casualty—such belief in his depth of feeling that it had defied all she had thought to be truth.

_He has grown very fond of you._

Many days—many marches of solitary years had seen Tauriel aloof from the world, unburdened by connection. She had waited all that time to hear confirmation of this hope. Yet never in all of her foolish imaginings had she guessed that if the possibility existed, it would be uttered by the king rather than his son.

_Do not give him hope where there is none._

Legolas’ face appeared before her again as it had when he was a child—the softness of youth losing its foothold to the hastening step of adulthood.

_You shall know the greatest of loves. Pain…sacrifice…and love._

Her grandmother had died before she could live to see whether or not her predictions for Tauriel's life would unfold. She had died never seeing the arrival of the orcs who had viciously ended her own. Adanethael had died, and so had her mother, father, and sister. Her talented, shining sister Gannelwen, who had been destined to be a dancer in Thranduil’s halls.

She no longer believed in fate.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When Tauriel arrived in the dungeons it was quiet. There was a stillness in the air that signaled all of the life that occupied its cells had yet to stir.

The young guard who stood sentry looked as if he had been carried away with a bottle of Dorwinion wine the night before and was ready to fall down with exhaustion. She relieved him of his post and took over. There would be plenty of time to reprimand him for it later.

She made her rounds and kept her step as light as possible while looking in on the sleeping prisoners. She whirled around as a sound came from behind her—a pebble disturbed, bits of crumbling rock slipping into darkness. She stopped and listened. Nothing.

She sighed. The dream always rattled her for days after, and with the bluster she was now being forced to handle because of those _dwarves—_

A gust of air swept past her on the bridge. She nearly lost her footing. The muted echo of running footsteps reverberated off of the dungeon’s cavernous ceiling.

“ _Who goes there_?” She shouted.

When there was no answer, Tauriel drew her bow and ran in the direction of the retreating footsteps.

There again. She heard them clearly; could see ahead of her as bits of rubble skittered off the narrow bridge, though she could not make out her quarry. She ran on. After her breath started coming fast and she felt sweat break along her brow, she began to suspect that the only chase she was giving were to shadows. Whatever it was had eluded her.

 _Perhaps it was a rodent_. The possibility seemed unlikely.

Tauriel returned to her post. She had covered much ground in her pursuit. When she made it back she found that her prisoners had risen, awoken by the noise of her echoing shout and footfalls.

“Good morning, Captain,” a voice greeted.

Kili tilted his head and regarded her as if she were one of the most fascinating things he’d seen all morning. Judging from the lack of stimulation in the dungeons, Tauriel supposed she was.

“When’s breakfast?”

“Another guard will be here to attend you shortly,” she said, frustration snapping in her voice.

“I see now why you elves stay so thin,” he grumbled. “If that gruel we received for supper last night was anything to go on.”

She drew her lips in a line. The day was not shaping well and she had better things to do than stand here and discuss the subtleties of prison fare with a dwarf.

 “Wait! I know your name—Tauriel, isn’t it?”

It surprised her. He looked pleased with himself.

 “How did you know?” She demanded.

“I overheard that elf say it. The ladyish-looking one. ”

 _Valar, if you’re listening._ She sighed. “That was not a ‘ladyish elf.’ That was Prince Legolas.”

Kili wrinkled his nose. “Oh, that’s who it was? Hard to tell under those cheekbones.”

Tauriel’s lips thinned. “If that is all—”

“What does it mean?”

She stopped. "What?"

“Your name—what’s it’s meaning?”

The dwarf—Kili—seemed in earnest. “Why do you wish to know?” she asked, feeling as if he hid some weapon her guards might had missed and would spring it upon her.

“To talk,” he said, as if it was obvious. As if _he_ was obvious.

“We are talking.”

“Well, yes, but—you know—to _talk_. To get to know each other.”

“Why would we wish to do that?”

“Oh, for—nevermind."

Tauriel felt her frustration lift like fog. Even more astonishing, she found herself smiling as she left for patrols.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

She returned later that evening and went to his cell.

“Daughter of the forest,” she said.

Kili paused in his ministrations. He was scratching pictures with his nail in the dirt floor. One image looked like it was meant to be a pony or a pregnant warg.

“What's that?"

“You asked me what my name meant. It means ‘daughter of the forest.’”

His brow creased. He seemed to digest the sound of it. The patchwork of hair that clung to his lower jaw could not decide whether or not to become a beard.

“Why did you tell me?”

Tauriel lowered her eyes. Truthfully, she did not know why she had given into the impulse to satisfy the dwarf’s prying; he was her prisoner, and she had never before been tempted into exchanging information with one. Though she did suppose that it was only a name, and what harm could a name do? It was such a small thing. So she answered as simply as she could, feeling herself poised to jump from some great height to what she could not see that waited below.

“Because you asked.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> Sindarin (Elvish)
> 
> Adaeinior: familial term of endearment. A play on combining Adanethael's name and the Sindarin word for "grandmother."  
> Gannelwen: Tauriel's sister. A Sindarin occupational name denoting the female form for "dancer."  
> Nessa: (as quoted from the Tolkien Gateway) "Nessa was a Valië. She was the wife of Tulkas and sister of Oromë. Nessa was noted for her speed, fast like an arrow, able to outrun the deer who follow her in the wild, and also for her dancing ability, as she danced on the ever-green lawns of Valimar."  
> hên: (child)  
> Lle naa belegohtar: (you will be a great warrior)
> 
> Black Speech (Orcish)
> 
> Atigat! (there)  
> Thrak mag at kri! (bring me their heads)  
> Shigo na bal (taste flames)
> 
>  
> 
> Well, there's another chapter. I hope you enjoyed it. As promised, this fic is finished and shall be updated every other week. If you would like to see more, and sooner, you must comment and review!
> 
> And yes, Kili is a terrible artist. But we love him anyway. ~_+


	3. A Confidence Kept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel makes a friend. Legolas writes a letter. Thranduil keeps secrets. Thorin is Thorin.

A week passed.

Tauriel made it a habit every morning of coming into the dungeons to check on the guard that had been posted as sentry the night before, sometimes arriving later in the evenings after patrols just as she had on the first day of the dwarves’ capture.

Merethen Gilith was in six days’ time, and she fully anticipated some other incident to occur on part of the young guards who were overseeing the prisoners, though none yet had. After being scolded as if they were still children once already and being given the most tedious tasks, they seemed just as weary of receiving punishment as Tauriel was of giving it.

Kili had not said much to her since their previous exchange, though he kept stealing glances at her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking. It made her uncomfortably aware of herself, and more than a little perplexed.

“He’s a soft-headed one, that,” the dwarf with the long white beard said to her as she passed by his cell.  “Pay him no mind.”

None of the other dwarves save for Kili had broken their silence since capture. Tauriel’s curiosity was piqued.

“How so?”

“He’s young—has iron ore knocking around in his skull. Thinks with the little head, not the one on his shoulders, if you take my meaning.”

She flushed _. Were all dwarves so vulgar?_

“Yes, I think I do.”

“You’ve been a fair jailer to us,” the white-bearded dwarf continued, looking at Tauriel as if he’d just balanced a scale. “I reckon you’ll keep at it.”

“Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”

The old dwarf smiled. It stretched under his bulbous nose, showing a small set of brown weathered teeth.

“You’re a good lass. I knew as much when I first saw you. Thorin wouldn’t think so, but then, Thorin doesn’t think much of any elf. Not that he doesn’t have his reasons.”

“I thought all dwarves hated elves.”

“Not all,” he assured. “In my youth our people were on friendlier terms. Before the fall of King Thror and…well, that’s all history to hear tale of.”

She nodded. It wasn’t a polite line of conversation to pursue.  “But you do not hate elves?”

“Goodness, no!” He laughed. “I’ve been around for too long. That’s like sayin’ all the apples in the barrel are bad if one’s got a worm in it.”

Tauriel’s mood lifted. She couldn’t help but feel well-disposed toward the old dwarf.

When she walked back to her post Kili’s voice drifted toward her.

“Made a friend, did you?”

He had barely spoken a word to her in almost five days. Looking at him now, nothing about his behavior suggested anger or a newfound resentment. Rather, he seemed peculiarly agitated, as if he had been struggling with something. Tauriel wondered if his companion had been right—perhaps he was a bit soft-headed.

“Who is he?” she asked, indicating the cell across the bridge.

“Balin,” Kili said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s gone senile—things don’t _spring to mind_ as they used to, if you gather.”

Tauriel flushed for the second time that day. “Are all dwarves so obscene?”

Kili gave her an impish grin. It made her breath hitch.

“Only the best.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“ _Nikerym_ , _En_.”

Her lieutenant called her over. They were just beginning the day’s patrols and he was crouched on the peak that overlooked the gates to the palace, looking grimly at the ground.

“ _Mani naa ta Shaalth_?“

“There is more.”

She saw what had alerted him: an indentation in the soft mud with five punctures at the top, one large toward the center where the claws had hooked into the soil.

Orc tracks.

Cold lanced through her. Since she had become captain, orcs knew better than to venture past the fringes of Mirkwood—if they valued their lives. The average orc would not think to set foot near the gates of King Thranduil unless they had sufficient incentive.

 _Something is dangerously amiss_.

This was the fifth pair of orc tracks that Tauriel’s guards had come across since the band of dwarves had been captured. It was too extraordinary to be mere coincidence.

She touched the tip of her blade to the track marks, running it through into the soil as if it were the flesh of the orc that had made it. _What is it that we do not know?_

Tauriel could think of nothing that orcs wanted so desperately that they would risk their own deaths to procure in Mirkwood.

She thought of the king in his throne room—the way his eyes had cut into her like spears. _Other lands are not my concern._ Perhaps soon he would feel the same about their own.

_I will speak to Legolas first._

Thunder boomed in the sky. The early clouds of autumn harkened a storm. She glanced down the length of her light tunic and armor. _Too late to go back and change_. She shook her head ruefully.

What could orcs want with a bumbling band of dwarves so far from home?

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Tauriel was wet and chilled by the time she made her way to the dungeons that night. She hadn’t bothered to return to her dwelling to change her dress. She had to find Legolas as soon as she checked on the guards.

Her clothing, which had been made for the heat and humidity of summer, was no longer appropriate for patrols. The season had changed faster than anyone had anticipated. She would do well to remember to dress for downpours.

The guard on duty, a young elf called Aglaradan, bowed his head with minimal acknowledgment. He yawned wide and stretched, all but dropping the keys in Tauriel’s hand as he left. If she didn’t have more pressing matters to attend, she would have put him on dawn patrol for three weeks for such a blatant show of insolence. His father and her predecessor, former Captain Badhron, was of a viewpoint that many held, though few flaunted with such indiscretion—that Silvan elves had no place in the guard. He had been one of the most vehement in speaking out against her promotion to the rank of captain, and now his son was mirroring his attitude.

She shivered, wringing the water from her hair as she waited for her replacement.

“You’re soaked through.”

Kili was watching her. His eyes bore through her, making her forget how cold she was.

“Caught in a storm,” she mumbled, searching for something to fill the silence.

“It rained all the time back home—Mam would yell at me and Fili for running out in it. We loved the smell of the leaves and grass after a storm.” The longing in his voice made her want to know more.

“Fili is your brother?”

Kili nodded, brushing back the black hair on his forehead with one deft hand. There was dirt and grime beneath his nails, coating the skin on the back of his wrist. Tauriel felt almost sorry that she couldn't offer him a bath.

“He got all the looks. That nice full beard of his makes all the girls back home go silly and lose their heads. Lot of good _that_ does,” he said, curling his lip.

Tauriel wondered at that. “I would not say—” she began, trailing off as he looked at her.

“Do you think I’m handsome?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she quickly denied. “Merely that beauty is not the same for all.”

“So you think that I’m beautiful?” his dark eyes danced in the torchlight. Tauriel briefly contemplated the satisfaction of striking him over the head with her bow.

When the guard who was to stand duty at last arrived, Tauriel pushed the keys into his hand. As she left, she could hear Kili’s laughter ringing out behind her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Legolas was writing a letter in the gardens when she found him.

“’ _Quel undome, Mellonamin_.”

He looked up, the smile he never permitted on his mouth in his eyes. “ _’Quel undome, Tauriel_.”

“If you are occupied, I may return.”

“No,” Legolas waved a tapered hand. She noticed how different they were than Kili’s hands—long and pale, filled with a more subtle strength. She looked down at her own. They were the same.

“I was writing to my cousin Arwen.”

Tauriel had seen Arwen Undómiel once when she was a child. Lord Elrond and his people had traveled to Mirkwood for Legolas’ coronation. She had lined the steps of King Thranduil’s palace along with her family and the hundreds of other Silvan clans that had poured into his great halls, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious Rivendell half-elves and the Evenstar who was whispered to be more radiant than Lúthien.

“I hope the lady is well,” she said. Tauriel’s thoughts inevitably drifted to the rumors that occasionally circulated of an impending betrothal between them. Legolas never spoke of it.

“I believe she is,” He said, a thoughtful frown rippling his smooth brow. “But she speaks of troubled dreams.”

“What dreams?” She asked, feeling it was safe to do so when the silence hung comfortable and open between them.

“Dark whispers—shadows moving in the Riverlands.”

“As with the King.”

“My father has long walked with visions of doom,” Legolas demurred. “I know not how many of these are owed to true threats or his habitual fears.”

“He is not the only one who walks with them,” she said, the familiar bitterness of memory on her tongue.

Legolas twisted the quill between his fingers.

“I know of your concerns,Tauriel. But it is my father’s choice. He has seen death enough to last a hundred mortal lifetimes and beyond. I cannot blame him for desiring to spare his people from enduring the same.”

It was a routine argument; the same circular debate they had been having for two hundred years with little ground to be gained. Legolas would defend his father’s inaction to the grave, and Tauriel would cast arrows at it.

“And what of the orcs?” she asked.

His look was subdued. He was not fool enough to relish such a small victory over her. “What of them?”

“Lieutenant Rochirion has spied them twice—once today and three days before. Orc tracks leading directly outside the palace walls.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Five—likely scouts.”

His eyes flashed. “Where there are scouts, there are commanders. Where there are orc commanders there are orc soldiers.”

“There is no way of knowing. It could be an isolated occurrence—a roving band. Not unlike our prisoners,” she finished.

“Yes—the _dwarves_ ,” he repeated, slowly dragging out the word.

“Even you must admit that the timing of their arrival is too unusual to hazard mere coincidence.”

“You are suggesting a connection?”

“I think it possible.”

Legolas leaned back against the bench he was reclining in and scowled. The letter he had been writing lay forgotten and unfinished at his side.

 “I will bring this before my father,” he decided.

Tauriel felt a rush of triumph. “I can rally the guard. We can—”

“No.” Legolas stood and came toward her. His blue eyes warm and grave, fixed on her with a depth of sorrow and understanding she wished she did not see. “You will not be involved.”

 _The pale orc was there, holding up her sister’s head._ “Legolas, if we _wait_ —”

“We will not act rashly. If the King decides this warrants action, I will take the guard and handle it myself.”

“I am the Captain of the Guard.”

“And I am your Prince.”

“ _Mellon_ , I can assemble an armed scouting party in no time and we can hunt for traces of—”

“ _Far,_ _Tauriel_!”

The strength in his voice stunned her.

“You cannot bring them back.”

She did not ask what he meant. Legolas could read the old grief and resentment in her as clear as a winter sky.

“I would protect you from yourself, _Mellanomin_ ,” his gaze held her tethered with its sincerity and everything else he had hitherto dared not show. Everything she had ever dreamed. Thranduil had been right. Suddenly it was too much—a wave that threatened to consume her.

She broke away first.

 “You would keep me from harm, Legolas, but who will keep it from the rest of us?”

He continued regarding her warmly, though she could see the change—the hurt behind his yes. She had put it there. “My father is a rational and just King, Tauriel. If he were not, you would not be standing here as Captain.”

Truth ignited his words; along with a flicker of shame. When she had been a foundling, Thranduil had made clear the fact that he blamed himself for her great loss—for the weakness in his defenses of Emyn Duir where her clan had called home. He had taken her in, offered her a place, a purpose among the Silvan elves who served him. He had even championed her when she had declared her wish to join the guard. She was young, weak, of low birth, and female. No other voice but that of the king would have moved former Captain Badhron into acquiescence.

“You are right. He has shown me favor time and time again. He has granted me more leniency on many occasions than I should otherwise deserve.”

Legolas’ eyes sparked with mirth. He stood and placed a hand upon her shoulder. It was a gesture they had reenacted since the beginning of their friendship; a way of bridging any divide that might threaten. She should not have been bothered by it this time, but she was; it felt like a means of quelling her.

“You and my father are more alike than you realize. I think that is why you do not agree often—you are both hard of conviction. Sometimes I think _you_ his child rather than I.”

Tauriel willed the corners of her mouth to lift. She remembered the king’s eyes—so cold and blue they gave away nothing. How many times had she looked into the reflective flat of her blade, the silvering on a belt buckle, or the tranquil surface of a pool to find the same distance staring back at her?

“Has he said when he shall free the dwarves?”

“No.”

 _That is strange_ , she thought. She did not let it show. “It is nearly a fortnight since their capture—usually we escort prisoners to the border and release them by now.”

“He still seeks information from their leader.”

 “He has already questioned him once. Has he learned anything?”

“Of course not; if he had, he would have spoken to us of it.”

“We cannot keep them indefinitely. They are trespassers, not prisoners of war.”

 “We should say the same of the orcs.”

“They mean no harm.”

“You’re so sure?” There was an edge to his voice. “They have divulged their secrets to you?”

“No,” she admitted. _Not yet._

“Truly, Tauriel—they are like as not a band of wandering thieves. We no doubt do the world a favor in sparing it of their presence. Remember they are our prisoners, not our friends.”

She thought of the white bearded dwarf—Balin—and what his response had been when she asked him if he hated elves; the curious peace his bright eyes and lined face had brought her.

Then there was Kili of course—the flirtatious young dwarf with the longing for the rains of his home, for a mother who chastened him to come in and dry himself by the warmth of the hearth.

 _Here is a riddle that needs deciphering._ The dwarves, the orcs, the rot in the land itself; all were connected somehow. Legolas did not see it. Too ready was he to bow and let the burden of responsibility to the hands of his father. It had always been that way and she knew that a part of him that was not yet ready to lead found it reassuring.

She was on her own.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“What does King Thranduil want with you?”

If she had thought Thorin Oakenshield intimidating while wearing armor, she had believed that the effect would diminish once he had spent several nights in a damp cell with only a tunic and breeches to keep out the cold.

Tauriel had been wrong: Thorin Oakenshield would have been intimidating wearing a sackcloth. He was leaner than most other members of his company, though not the leanest—that distinction was left to the young ones, Fili and Kili. Yet for all of that he was powerful of build, the cords of muscle visibly shifting in his neck as he breathed. His brow was prominent, the eyes clear and deep-set; the nose thin and arrogant. Only a fool would meddle with him.

Tauriel was beginning to feel a fool as she stared at him. His gaze swept over her with palpable indifference. When the question earned her nothing but silence, she made to leave.

“Why not ask your King?”

She turned. Thorin Oakenshield looked at her with a bored skepticism. Tauriel was well aware that had he not spent nearly two weeks alone in a cell, she would probably not have received even that.

“The King says that he has questioned you and found you wanting. You will remain here until you give him the answers he seeks.”

Thorin threw his head back and laughed. Tauriel could see back to the dark hollow of his throat—all the way to the gold that had been inlaid in his teeth. She wondered then if he would sprout another head.

When he appeared to calm, she continued.

“I can help you. I can assure your release if you choose to cooperate. No trespasser should have to be confined in these dungeons for so long.”

“I care not for the promises and false sympathies of elves. Your King already knows why we are here. He’s known from the moment we were set in chains upon his door.”

She gazed on him impassively. Inwardly, she stumbled with the knowledge that Thranduil had been withholding information. She was in charge of the prisoners—he had not communicated anything to her. Not even to his son. To what end?

The dwarf leader read her uncertainty.

“I find it curious that _King_ Thranduil does not share his confidence with his highest ranking guard. I can’t imagine this behavior would inspire great love among his subjects.” He was toying with her.

“My loyalty is not subject to question.”

Thorin grinned. Unlike Kili, there was little warmth in it. He and Thranduil shared that in common. “Nor is mine.”

Tauriel glowered. She pressed closer to the bars. “I will ask one more time, dwarf: why were you traveling through Mirkwood? What is it that you're after?”

Thorin appraised her as if she were an insect he very much wanted to crush. “Only what all men seek she-elf, be they mortal or immortal: a name, a legacy, a place to belong. If your own liege will not share knowledge of his prisoners with you, why should I? The only authority you have is to cage us.”

She felt the anger boil within her at his stubbornness. He dismissed her as easily as Thranduil—as if she were the one in the cell!

“And what a cage it is,” she agreed, smiling without humor. “For you shall have all the time in the world to enjoy it.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> (Sindarin)
> 
> Merethen Gillith (The Feast of Starlight)  
> Nikerym, En: (Captain, look)  
> Mani naa ta Shaalth?: (What is it, Lieutenant?)  
> Rochirion: (Name means "Son of a Horse Lord" masculine)  
> Aglaradan: (Name means "Man of Glory" masculine)  
> Badhron: (Name means "Judge" masculine)  
> ’Quel undome, Mellonamin: (Good evening, my friend)  
> Mellon (Informal, friend)  
> Far!: (Enough!)  
> Emyn Duir: *This is where I imagine Tauriel would have been born. (From the Tolkien Gateway: "The Mountains of Mirkwood lay in the central parts of northern Mirkwood, north of the Old Forest Road. A jumble of fir-covered, low-lying hills to the west rose to greater heights in the east, together forming a range nearly one hundred miles in length. Historically, the Second Age saw these mountains inhabited by Silvan Elves, who knew the range as the Emyn Duir, the Dark Mountains.")
> 
>  
> 
> Another chapter, yay! I usually post every other Sunday, but I'll be doing things this weekend so...a day early. I just saw BotFA and it broke me. But it's all good, because it gives me more fodder to work with for the next part of this series when I write it. As always, I read all of my reviews, and take them all into consideration. They are very appreciated, so please review! That way I know people are actually reading and enjoying this. Happy Holidays and New Years!
> 
> Also, I just got a tumblr for those that would like to follow me for drabbles and updates. blackdeathfanfiction.tumblr.com


	4. A Deal Is Struck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel makes a deal with Kili. Ori is awesome. Fili is a protective older brother.

“You shouldn’t have made him angry.”

Tauriel sat beside Kili’s cell while she waited for the change in guard, legs dangling over the ledge into darkness. She twirled a stray leather ribbon that was unfurling from her bow, absently wrapping it around her fingers.

“He made _me_ angry,” she said.

“I didn’t think you could get angry.”

She looked at him. Kili held up his hands.

“It’s just that you’re always so…composed.”

The word conveyed something aloof and unreachable. Tauriel had an image of herself suddenly how he saw her; frozen, untouchable, her face carved from stone. Thranduil’s infinitely calm, chill gaze set in her own. It bothered her.

She looked up at the dark upper level of the dungeon. The iron bars stood out clearly to her eyes where Thorin resided.

“How do you know he is angry?” she asked.

Kili snorted. “Been babbling to himself all night. Stuff about ignorant she-elves and Thranduil’s betrayal. Since you’re the only she-elf who comes to visit— _elf maid,_ pardon—that leaves you.”

Tauriel observed the cavernous vault of the ceiling; a feature that made for perfect acoustics in the dungeon. She nodded in sympathy. “The echo must have been difficult.”

There were dark smudges under his eyes. “The guard tried to get him to stop. The only thing that worked was when Dwalin yelled and said he’d have to box his own ears to get any rest.”

She imagined the dwarf leader pacing his cell like a trapped beast; heavy-browed and erupting with frustration. “I’m sorry. I was under the impression that King Thranduil was keeping you prisoner because Thorin refused to give answer to your reasons for being in Mirkwood.”

Kili laughed. It had the ring of cynicism behind it that was disturbingly familiar. “No. I could have told you that. He said as much to us the first night we were here. Thranduil knows why we’ve come. He’ll do anything he needs to keep us prisoner.”

Surprise and a closing urgency roiled beneath her skin. “Why is that?”

Kili looked as if he would bring to light everything that was inside her. “You really don’t know?”

Tauriel shook her head. “I would not have troubled him if I did. He would not speak of it to me.”

Kili smirked softly. There was fondness in it. “That’s Uncle Thorin. Any chance he can get to hold something over an elf’s head—though I don’t suppose any of it matters now if you know.”

“Tell me,” she said, unable to stop the impatience that crept into her voice.

Kili’s smirk grew into a smile that she could only read as sly.

“What will you give me if I do?”

She was taken aback by the question. “You said it does not matter if I know.”

“It doesn’t,” Kili agreed. “But no dwarf worth his weight in gold would be blind enough to miss an opportunity.”

“I do not exchange bribes with prisoners.”

“Call it a trade.”

She exhaled loudly. “It matters not what you ‘call’ it, a bribe is still a bribe.”

“I’ll make you a deal: three answers to three questions. But you must give me three kisses.”

Tauriel spluttered, her face as red as her hair. “Of all the bold, _swaggering_ ways of dwarves—”

Kili’s laughter bubbled out like a brook.

“Alright, alright—no kisses three from a fair elf maid. I understand.” he grinned wide as all daring. “Excuse me, Tauriel. It’s been some time since I’ve enjoyed the charms of the dwarf lasses back home.”

The sound of her name on his lips was sweet. Like he had said it to himself until he had got the cadence right. She did not think the flames in her face would ever stop burning. When she was able to meet his gaze again, he was staring intently at her lap.

 “ _What_?” she asked sharply

Kili’s eyes innocently met hers. “Your bow—it’s beautiful.”

Tauriel looked down at it. She had forgotten. She’d managed to remove the leather cord she had been working at. It dangled in her fingers.

“Thank you,” she hesitated.

“I’m an archer myself.”

She raised a brow at that. “Truly? I did not think it a weapon of choice among dwarves.”

“It’s not,” he smiled shyly. “Mam says I’m a bit unique in that.”

 _And_ _tall_.

Kili looked at the cord in her hand. “That piece of leather—what if I traded you for that?”

Tauriel considered it. It was a thin scrap of leather. Nothing he could fashion a weapon or tool of escape from.

“And your hair.”

“My hair?” she frowned. “What of it?”

“Give me two locks.” He spoke quickly, as if this second request embarrassed him. She studied him curiously. She had heard of the dwarven preoccupation with hair. Rumor had it among her people that it was oddly revered—a center of cultural life with a strange etiquette and strict adherence to hundreds of customs unknown to outsiders. For elves hair was certainly a standard of beauty, but beauty for beauty’s sake, with no particular meaning attached.

She shrugged. What was hair traded for information? It held no significance to her. Red was not an attractive color for elf-kind by any stretch of imagination—it was looked upon suspiciously and feared. What did it matter if Kili wanted it? She supposed she was glad that someone did.

He watched with rapt attention as she removed one of her blades from its sheath at her hip and brought a length of her hair to its edge. “That should be enough,” he murmured, all traces of cunning and merriment gone from his voice. He was very serious as Tauriel drew the coppery tendrils across the blade, almost solemn, as if it were some action only one of them understood.

“As agreed Master Dwarf,” she bound the hair with the leather cord and handed it to him through the bars. She brushed his fingers. They were calloused and warm. It was the first time they had touched and it sent white sparks through the tips of her own.  

Kili seemed to feel it as well. He took the thick length of hair in his hand and closed his fist around it, as if it would escape. Then, dividing it into two smaller portions, he stuck both pieces along with the cord into separate pockets.

She was about to ask him what he would do with it but something—the pleasure in his dark eyes, the way he had watched the blade as it cut her hair—held her back.

“Yes, as agreed.” He smiled, swift and bright as the sun.

Tauriel nodded, strangely pleased to give him pleasure. _Get to the point._

“Why were you traveling through Mirkwood?” she asked. The sound of her voice too abrupt in the silence of the caves.

“You do cut to the chase, don’t you?”

“ _Kili_.”

He smiled. “That was the first time you said my name. I’ll look forward to hearing it more often—and under different circumstances.” Tauriel fought down a second blush that rose along her neck.

His teasing retreated, though the smile did not. It was entirely too knowing for her liking. “Alright, alright. Can’t have an elf saying I don’t uphold my end of a bargain. What was the question?”

“Why were you traveling through Mirkwood and being followed by orcs?”

“That’s two questions in one!” He twisted a fingertip in his ear. His eyes widened after a moment as he fully digested the weight of what she'd just said. “Wait. What?”

 _Is it possible that they don't know?_ Tauriel regarded him closely. “My guard found five tracks outside the palace. I suspected that your company may have something to do with their presence.”

Kili’s face went ashen _._ She knew then. There was fear in it, though he tried to cover it. "How long ago?"

"Yesterday and two days prior."

His eyes darkened. He appeared to grapple with a memory or explanation; she did not know with which. When he spoke, it was with reluctance, as though to do so would conjure the orcs where they stood. “We ran into them awhile back. We had hoped that we were far enough now that they would lose our trail.” He sighed, long and low. Burden in the sound. “Thorin must know.”

He had confirmed her suspicions. Tauriel wondered what she would do with the knowledge. What would Legolas say now that she knew for certain that their prisoners were wanted by orcs? Better yet, what would Thranduil do?

“But why?” The words broke forth from a dam inside her. “What do they want? Why were you traveling through Mirkwood?”

Kili glanced at her, as if he’d forgotten she was there. A touch of relief washed over him, as if she’d pulled him back from a place he did not wish to linger.

“There’s a bounty on our heads. We had no choice. We needed to pass through your lands to reach the Misty Mountains.”

Tauriel absorbed this. She had scant memories of the stories that had been told to her of the Misty Mountains; her people rarely spoke of it for grief. There had been a great dwarf kingdom that had once prospered there, and it was a time when the Sindar and the dwarves had enjoyed a close friendship. It had all ended in greed and dragon fire.

“Why do you journey there?”

He stared into the darkness of the dungeon past her shoulder like it held something out of reach. “To reclaim the halls of our fathers.”

 _Erebor_.  The word touched her mind suddenly like a lost treasure. Occasionally in his fouler moods Thranduil would speak of it and the tragedy that had befallen the race of dwarves and men who had lived within and near its walls. _Pray that you never know the horrors of dragon fire…_

“That’s two questions, Captain.” The strength in his voice had renewed itself. It returned her to the moment. “Well. Technically three, but for you I’ll let it pass. One left, or I shall start demanding kisses.”

Tauriel weighed her options. There were still too many unknowns—three questions could not possibly yield up everything. But it was something, at least. She thought of their brooding leader in his cell who she had tried to question; his refusal and denial of her attempt to help him while gleaning further information. _Thorin must know._

“Who is Thorin Oakenshield?” She asked.

Kili’s gaze absorbed the flames that moved in the torchlight. He smiled sadly, as if he was waiting for it as the revelation formed into a solid wall between them.

“The King Under the Mountain.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 _He has lied to us_. _Lied to his son and to his subjects._

It was all she could think. But for once Tauriel thought that she knew his motives. There was still rumor among their people that had been heard years ago from the men over the lake before Mirkwood had sealed itself against the seasons of the world. It was said that the dragon still slept in the treasure caverns deep within the Lonely Mountain. If Thranduil knew Thorin Oakenshield’s true intent, he was shrewd indeed to dissuade him from it, even if that meant holding him imprisoned against his will. Waking the worm would mean a renewed age of death for all.

 _But he cannot understand_. No, Thranduil would never understand the cold desire for vengeance, to reclaim that which had been lost, that which another had stolen. In that Tauriel could sympathize with the dwarves.

 _If there is no dragon reclaiming Erebor would also mean reclaiming Dale._ Gold would flow once more into that ravaged land, passing through the hands of dwarves to men. Perhaps the mending of that devastation could be the dressing on the wounds that would heal the enmity between dwarves and elves.

Yet there was no way to know if the dragon lived. Not unless the company reached Erebor.

 _That is an uncertain road fraught with doom._ It spoke to Thranduil's credit in taking a cautious fork, and she could not blame him. Legolas would crow with delight if he knew that Tauriel was in agreement with his father for once. 

Though she could not help feeling that there was more that Thranduil knew and was not saying; something that belonged in the distant past that had already unfolded its ancient terrors and sorrows long before. When she thought of the catalyst the presence of the dwarves had wrought in her life, proof that the world had not yet succumbed to ruin outside of Mirkwood, that there were others who still struggled despite the nameless encroaching darkness for the promise of joy, faith, and future—something in her heart lifted.

It was hope.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

She heard it again.

The patter of feet behind her. Too large to be a rodent.

 _I am not mad_. Tauriel knew that she and the dwarves were not alone in the dungeons. Her ears and better senses told her she was being followed by someone or something of particular stealth. But there was no sight nor sound of them, and there were few places in the dungeon caves that anyone could hide for long. She had seen to all of them, and had found nothing.

Her pursuer coughed in the darkness. She withdrew her dagger and whirled around.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” the dwarf with the bowl-shaped hair and brown frock smiled nervously in his cell. He thumped his fist against his chest, making a great fuss of clearing his throat.

This one was the shyest of the group, while the others save for Kili and Balin—the latter of whom was now treating her to a daily greeting—continued to take their example from their leader by willfully ignoring her.

“Will you please do me a favor?” the dwarf asked. There was a slight pinkening to his cheeks. He said it so quietly even she had difficulty hearing the request. _As long as it isn’t three kisses._

She resheathed the blade. “What would you have me do?”

He gestured to a tramped-down patch of earth outside the bars. “Sit there as still as possible—no—a little to the left—yes, right there. Like that. Perfect.” He retrieved a folded slip of parchment from his sleeve as well as a stump of blackened charcoal. Tauriel wondered how the guards had missed it, not that he was close enough to the cells of his companions to pass notes.

“Crude tools, but they’ll do,” he hummed in his high pitched, cheery voice.

“What are they for?” she asked.

He continued as if he hadn’t heard her, lost in the tune and the quick, sweeping motions of his fingers. They were less blunt than the others, not as square and calloused. They seemed cleaner as well. The fastidious mark of a scholar.

Tauriel could have remained upright, still as a stone for as long as the dwarf wished, though her curiosity was getting the better of her toward the end when he at last announced that he was finished.

“There.” he passed the parchment to her with barely repressed excitement.

It was a drawing of her. He had captured her likeness well. It was significantly better than Kili’s pony or warg had been. Once again, the implacable seriousness of the expression her representation wore unsettled her.

“You are very skilled,” she complimented.

His face glowed. “Thank you. I’m also writing a ballad of our travels. Do you mind if I include you in it?”

She smiled. _I will likely outlive his ballad._ “Not at all.”

“I’m Ori. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Tauriel.”

She laughed, marveling. “It appears you all discover my name before I have opportunity to give it.”

His eyes shown like pebbles in a river stream. “We all know it. The others grumble about you talking to Kili at night.” His cheeks turned the color on the inside of a shell. “They keep telling him to stop, but it makes him angry. He won’t listen.”

She thought of the young dwarf defending her to his companions and she felt oddly warmed, though it troubled her. It was the first time that she’d heard of it.

Tauriel passed the parchment back through the bars. Ori took it and folded it back up into his sleeve. “How do you communicate?” She asked, truly perplexed. Speaking among the prisoners, though the echoes of the dungeon’s walls carried words well, was not permitted.

“Well…now…that’s a bit of a secret,” he said, the pink in his cheeks intensifying to scarlet. He wrung his hands. By rights Tauriel could have demanded an answer, but she found herself reluctant to break the fragile, tentative connections she had stumbled upon with her three prisoners. Besides, what did they have? There was little they could do to escape, even if they tried. The dungeons had stood for centuries with never a prisoner escaping, though she and her guard were committed to their duty.

 _Remember they are our prisoners, not our friends._ Legolas’ voice chastened the direction of her thoughts before they could carry her further. Even so, she decided not to press him.

“Why won’t Kili listen to the others?” she asked.

Ori seemed grateful. He latched onto the release she gave him like a fish on a hook. “Because he fancies you.”

Her breath hitched at his words. She shook her head and indulged in a small smile. She was fond of the young dwarf’s flirtatious nature despite herself. _He will grow out of it soon._ Tauriel had lived long enough to see his example among her own kind; young elves whose words were made in starlight and their affections to wander on the wind. The notion grew more foolish beyond that. Elves and men had loved, surely. But dwarves and elves? Who ever heard of such?

“I do not wish to be a source of conflict among friends,” she said.

Ori rolled his eyes. “Not much that can be done about that. Kili’s always had his own mind about things. He's got a rebellious streak—um, as Balin would put it—” he swallowed, face turning the color of a particularly ripe apple. 

She relieved him of the subject. There was no point in dwelling on it. _Here today, gone tomorrow.“_ What will you call your ballad?”

The gratitude in his eyes mingled with delight. He clapped his hands. “The Journey of the Lonely Company—because we are traveling to the Lonely Mountain, you see, and it’s a pun because we’re all alone on the road to Erebor…”

He trailed off, as if he had long practice with those who listened to him immediately losing interest. Judging by the gruffness of some of his more formidable companions, Tauriel guessed that he did.

“A talented artist and poet,” she said, shaking her head in genuine wonder.

Ori beamed, rushing on at the encouragement. “I’m going to write a book as well. A history. It will be a great history that will never be forgotten.” He said it with an air of such prophesy that Tauriel felt a shiver pass over her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Leave my brother alone.”

She was caught off guard less by the strength in the voice than the anger that it held.

The fair-haired dwarf—Fili—was cloaked in darkness, sitting as far back against the earthen wall as the width of his cell permitted.

“I’ve heard that elven women enjoy playing with the hearts of mortals. Leave him alone, or you’ll regret it.”

Anger leapt within her. How dare he? “We do not play with hearts any more than mortal women do. And _I_ do not play at all, dwarf.”

Fili smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. He was tall like Kili, but lacked his younger brother’s coltishness.

“It’s that red hair of yours. Unnatural on any but a dwarf. He’s convinced you’re Yavanna returned.” She did not understand the reference, though she guessed as much at what it meant.

Their eyes locked in a stalemate of mutual dislike. Tauriel couldn't fathom his vitriol. She made her voice as frigid as the air that moved through the caverns. “I do not seek to charm your brother with illusions. I do not seek to charm him at all. Whatever he has told you, he believes by his own daydreams.”

“He does at that.” His mouth twisted. He looked very much like Thorin. “He is younger than me, and foolish, it’s true. But I am not. I don’t trust you, elf. Leave him alone, or you’ll have me to deal with when you've left him to pick his heart off the floor.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

She was beginning to learn the temperaments and names of each one of her prisoners.

“See now, there’s Bombur. He’s the one who looks like he’s been stuffed with pie filling—and there’s Bofur, his brother. Bifur’s their cousin—he doesn’t talk much except for the gurgles. Then there’s Dori, Nori, and Ori, they’re all kin. Dori’s the strongest and Nori’s the slyest. Ori’s a bit too bookish for my taste. You’ve got Oin and Gloin—both hot-tempered—then Dwalin, and you’ve met Balin. Dwalin courted our Mam once before Fili and I threatened to geld him. Last of all there’s Uncle Thorin…”

“How did you come to be together on your quest?”

Kili smiled. His brown eyes reminisced. “We’re all members of Thorin’s court, as well as close and distant relations.”

Loyalty to kin was understandable. “You and your brother are his nephews? Does this make you in line for succession according to dwarf ways?”

He rested his elbow on his knee, propping his smile up with one hand. “Looking to nab a prince, Captain? I couldn’t blame you—I’m a touch better choice than Lady Legolas.”

She scoffed at him. His meaningless flirtations were infuriating even as their charm-tipped darts found their mark.

“We’re next in Durin’s line. It’s Fili first, since he’s older. Then me.”

"It is the same with elves," she nodded. “Do you hope for kingship?”

“Mahal, no!” he laughed, showing two even rows of teeth. “Fili’s the leader. He’s like Thorin—all sense and seriousness. I’m the breeder.”

His last words struck her. “What do you mean?”

Kili’s face was full of mischief. The two never parted for very long. “Fili’s a bit of a…bent axe. They’ll be no heirs from him.”

She recalled his fair-haired sibling’s glare at her from the shadows of his cell. _Leave my brother alone._ “What is a bent axe?”

Kili looked furtively over her shoulder. “Don’t say it so loud! The others don’t know. Well…maybe Balin knows. But Balin knows everything. He’s the same himself, anyways. One pick knows another.”

The puzzlement must have shown on her face. He looked at her, both brows raised. “You really don’t know? What’s the euphenismie you have for it in Elvish?”

HIs expression dripped with insinuation. Tauriel understood then. “Ah...you mean _melant ned erig_.”

“What’s that?”

“It means ‘lover of thorns.’”

He chuckled. “That’s better than ours. Aye, Fili’s quite the thorny sort.”

“Why do you keep it secret?” she asked.

Kili scratched his arm. “Well, there aren’t many lasses born to Mahal’s people. So we’re all supposed to be chasing the ones that are.”

She looked thoughtfully at him. “I did not know it was shameful to be _melant ned erig_ for dwarves. My people are long-lived and take many lovers, male and female.”

“I don’t mind,” he admitted. “He’s my brother, no matter what end of the hammer he likes. It’s just not spoken of. Uncle Thorin would be disappointed that one of Durin’s line wouldn’t be continuing it. Few of us left to go around."

“There is you,” she pointed out.

“Yes, there’s me,” he grinned. “I’ll be the one to marry and beget heirs. They’ll follow after Fili or me, so it’s fine. Mam isn’t worried about it. Can’t keep my hands off the girls as it is.”

She felt the sharp point of a spear twist in her at that.

“What about you?” he asked, casually carving patterns in the dirt floor with the heel of his boot.

“What about me?”

“Do you have someone?” He was no longer looking at her, though he seemed intent on her answer. “Do you already have a sweetheart?”

Tauriel knew he was prying and that it was none of his concern; it really wasn’t. Yet she found herself answering without reserve. “No,” she said, remembering all that had been unspoken behind Legolas’ eyes. She felt traitorous and awkward thinking of it in front of him. As if he was a candle she was holding to her private thoughts.

“It’s your Mirkwood Prince, isn’t it?”

She drew back as if he’d slapped her. 

“He looks at you.” His voice cracked. “Do you want him to?”

 _Do you? "_ It does not matter what I want," she said coldly, as if from a distance.

He raised his eyes from the ground and did look at her then, and she read sympathy there. Sympathy and something else that was budding and heated and impossible.

She stood and walked back to her post.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations
> 
> (Sindarin)
> 
> Melant ned erig: (lover of thorns.)
> 
> I am recovering from the Cold From Hell and watching the replays of the Golden Globes. Yet, somehow, in my terrible sickitude, I have also managed to post the next chapter on schedule. Yay! Anyone get the reference to the Book of Mazarbul? And yes, Fili is a queen. This is the Hobbit, people. We all know it's one big sausage fest, so I'm personally of the mind that we've got to have some diversity here. 
> 
> As always, reviews are ambrosia! Sweet delectable chocolate-covered cheese-slathered with crumpled bacon-on-top bliss for my soul. Very much appreciated.


	5. A Choice Is Made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel is conflicted. Kili has fine dexterity skills as long as it's not drawing. Legolas needs a hug. Invisible Bilbo makes a visible cameo. The dwarves escape from Mirkwoodtraz. Thranduil is Winter. Orcs happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't usually post notes at the beginnings of chapters, but I feel that this one is well deserved. There is a fabulous artist by the name of Irrel who has done a number of artworks for this fandom. She's done cover art for The Heir Apparent by Chasingperfectiontomorrow (my favorite author in this fandom) whose fic I highly recommend and you can find here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1126237/chapters/2270714
> 
> And she's done a lovely gem for this fic from the "bargain" scene in Chapter Four: A Deal is Struck, which I would like to use as cover art with her permission. I can't thank her enough. She's really incredible. Please go support her and check out her art at her tumblr: http://irrel.tumblr.com/

Another storm was coming.

The moss grew dark green on the northern faces of the trees. The soil softened imperceptibly, ready to drink in life and rain. The humidity was a heavy drape in the air that cloyed at her senses.

Tauriel rested beside the river, watching it rage and froth at the roaring mouth of the dam. Birdsong drifted down from the sunless canopy. The old growth of trees and ferns that surrounded her were denser than any other part of the grove. None but her people had ever seen these reaches of Mirkwood. It would take a mortal many lifetimes to navigate it without getting lost.

“How I find you,” Legolas chuckled. He had taken care to be quiet though she had heard him coming up along the ridge behind her. It was a game of stealth they had played since they were young.

“You look wild—a fox come out of its den.”

She flicked a snarled strand of red away from her face and smiled. “This fox was enjoying the scent of rainfall.”

Legolas looked skeptically above his head, taking in the clouds that roiled across the sky. “It makes my hair do strange things.”

She laughed. “So I have seen. You could be mistaken for a dwarf.”

The light in his eyes dimmed. It had nothing to do with the shadows cast by the congregation of trees. “I know that you have grown fond of the dwarves, Tauriel. You have a gentle heart. But I think it wise that you stop speaking to them.”

A chill breeze rustled along the edges of her tunic sleeves. “Is that a command, My Prince?”

He searched her face carefully. “It is the concern of a friend.”

“I know my place, Legolas.”

His relief was visible. It bothered her even more than what he had said.  She closed her eyes and heard him sigh, letting the first hints of autumn wind bite at her cheeks and nose.

“Forgive me. That was tactless.”

He sat down silent beside her. The grass was a lush emerald beneath them. When he did speak again, it was as if he were dredging up a heavy burden from a pit. “You were right about my father. He has been keeping secrets.”

 _I am a fool._ She realized too late how upset he was _._ When he desired Legolas could be artful at hiding his pain by lashing out at her with stern words. A lesson he had learned from his father, though Tauriel had begun to wonder how much the King still felt beneath his glacial repose. 

“What happened?” she touched his fingers. They were warm but did not send lightning through her as another’s had.

 _Kili_. He had been on her mind too much of late. She had practically run from him the other night. But she wasn’t avoiding him. She was busy with patrols, tightening security for the upcoming feast, scouting for further signs of orcs. This was the first idle moment she’d had to herself in weeks, and why should she not enjoy it away from her duties?

A butterfly arced overhead, its black wings fluttering, spiraling an impetuous dance. Tauriel wished she could unburden her thoughts to it. She could never discuss these feelings with Legolas. To speak of the curiosity she held for the dwarf— _dwarves_ —would chase her ever closer to some consequence she felt but could not see that was growing up around her like a creeping vine.

Legolas plucked a blade of grass, deep in thought and unaware of hers. “He told me that they are trying to retake Erebor. _Erebor_! Can you imagine? A fool’s errand. When I asked him how long he had known and why he hadn’t told me, he…looked at me and said that it wasn’t necessary. That speaking of it to me,” he said bitterly, “had not been warranted.”

Thranduil had never kept anything from his son. The change drove a nail now where before there had been none. The pain was clearer in Legolas’ voice than in his face, tainted by an added sorrow—a look Tauriel had seen occasionally that seemed a vestige of something else he mourned for but did not talk about.

Thranduil was everything to Legolas. Father, leader, mentor. Could he be so callous? He would have known the consequences of keeping secrets from his heir. If he had still chosen to keep his own confidence it was for good reason. Perhaps what the dark voice whispered inside Tauriel was true—perhaps he was hiding more than either of them suspected to protect them. But that also made it dangerous. Was it knowledge that was made more dangerous for their unknowing?

“I know you suspected as much,” he said, observing her with curiosity. “Yet you do not seem disturbed by it.”

“I was,” she admitted. “But I have had time to get used to it.”

“You know?” His expression was a mixture of surprise and wariness, like an animal that had been wounded and feared another arrow in its leg. It devastated her to see him like this; that he looked on her now as if he must question even her trust. _I would never hurt you, Mellon_. Her thoughts turned unbidden back to a pair of dark eyes.

“I discovered it when I tried to question Thorin Oakenshield yesterday. I was going to tell you when you were finished with your father.”

A hint of mirth tugged at his voice, laced with sarcasm. The wariness was gone, or had been masked. _He needs the mask_ , she realized.

“I can imagine how that went. How did you get him to talk? Threaten to trim his beard?”

She smiled. “He didn’t. I asked one of the younger ones.”

“The black-haired dwarf,” he said. All traces of mirth fled. “The archer.”

“Yes.”

Wind shook the leaves of the trees. The river boomed as a boulder loosened and moved along with the pounding in her breast. Tauriel waited for him to say something, waited…waited for what? _He looks at you._ She stared at her hands. Dirt embedded the nails, palms roughened with battle. Not fine by any race’s standards. _Do you want him to?_

“I told my father of the orc tracks,” he continued, as if there was nothing amiss and they were merely sharing a companionable moment like they always had. Yet she felt this new and immovable thing between them like a tree that had fallen in their path.

“He wishes us to double the patrols at night. He believes you are correct in assuming a connection with the dwarves.”

Kili’s pale face swam before her eyes. _There’s a bounty on our heads._ If she told Legolas he was as likely to remove them from the dungeons himself and tie them up at the edge of the forest. _Let the orcs have them if they want them._ She could hear his words as surely as if he’d ever spoken them. Was it not better than tempting them further into his father’s lands, better than risking the lives of their own people? Before Tauriel had come to know any of her prisoners, she would have agreed without hesitation. But now...

“Did he give any indication of what the connection could be?” she asked, not meeting his eyes.

“No,” he shook his head. “He did not appear to have any idea. But then,” his face hardened. “If he does, I no longer have the assurance that he will tell it to me.”

She could not look at him. She wondered if she would ever be able to look at him again as the knowledge that she could not bring herself to divulge this truth to him sunk within her like a stone. _You are right to doubt me, Legolas_. _I am no better than the King_. She could not risk endangering her people, but how could she risk endangering the lives of the dwarves—prisoners that had become so much more than prisoners? _Valar, guide me. What choice do I have?_

“I will alert the guards and do my best.”

“Yes,” Legolas said. His blue eyes acquired the grey of the impending storm. “You always do.”

 

* * *

 

 

Tauriel did not return to the dungeons for three days. She could not dwell on what she knew must come to pass. She had to tell Legolas of the bounty on the dwarves’ heads. Though she had not been able to ask Kili why there was a bounty, the fact that orcs were willing to risk following them across Mirkwood spoke volumes. The reason had to be great enough to command such a relentless pursuit.

Merethen Gillith was beginning. The sounds of celebration could be heard even so far below the palace. Beneath it the steady rush of water flowed from the falls that had weathered the caverns a millennia ago. Tonight there were enough guards posted to keep watch over the prisoners if Tauriel wished to go above and watch the lights of the feast from a distance. Yet here she was, making her way down and down into the bowels of the earthen prison, paranoia driving her feet forward, a certainty in her gut that the young sentries would find a way to be deep in their cups by the end of the night. She had to keep an eye on them, she told herself.

Kili was tossing a stone in the air when she found him, contemplation and boredom set on his features.

“The stone in your hand—what is it?”

His mouth lifted, as if he was deciding whether or not to turn his lip up at the sight of her. It appeared as if he would simply turn his back and ignore her. Instead, he treated her to a grave and sidelong look that said all. _Where have you been?_

“It is a talisman. A powerful spell lies upon it. If any but a dwarf reads the runes on this stone they will be forever _cursed_.” He brandished the stone at her and his eyes sparked with pleasure as she flinched.

Tauriel was not in the mood to entertain a bored and vindictive dwarf. Her conscience weighed heavily upon her. She gazed at him, seeing him with anger for the first time. It was him and his companions who were the cause of her present turmoil. They had brought a dire threat to the doorstep of her people, all for deluded dreams of a lost homeland. Were they so naïve? Did they know that they likely courted death rather than glory? _Do they care that they may bring it to the rest of us?_

She scowled and moved away from the bars. His voice piped up as she retreated.

“Or not,” he said quickly. She heard the apology beneath. She looked back at him. He hadn’t been sleeping well again and his face was pale and gaunt from want of more frequent meals and sunlight. _Perhaps he does know. Perhaps they all do._

“Depending on whether you believe that kind of thing…it’s just a token.” He turned the small stone in his palm.

“Do you believe in it?” she asked.

Kili stared at the cracks in the cell’s clay ceiling as if he were studying it for answers. “I believe in the one who gave it to me. I believe in myself. Most of the time,” he said, somewhat sheepish. “What about you, Captain? Do you believe in blessings or curses?”

Tauriel shifted and leaned against the bars. It was a strange question. The Silvan clans were very superstitious. Not so the Sindar—they were far better educated and knew the difference between true magic and foolishness. But she suspected that was not what he meant.

“I am not so unlike you,” she said. Her voice carried on the damp current of air between them. “I think if we cannot believe in ourselves, we cannot believe in others. Once we believe there is faith. Without faith there is no trust.”

Kili nodded sagely, as if he were aged by accumulated knowledge and experience. “Without trust there are no promises.”

“Promises?” she asked.

The light of the torch glowed softly on his tangled black hair, highlighting it a cast bronze in places. “I believe in promises. I used to break them all the time. One time I promised Fili that I’d let him have my dessert for three weeks if he helped me hide my pet badger from our Mam beneath his bed. That didn’t go over so well. I promised Bombur that I’d take him walking up the mountain slopes every morning and help him lose weight…”

He grimaced, an expression of self-disgust she was coming to understand. “I never kept any of them. Not until Uncle Thorin took me out hunting one day. I knew that he wanted to talk to me when he didn’t ask Fili to come. That’s how he is.” He smiled slightly.

“He’d never come right out and say it. We’d go hunting first—catch some rabbits or squirrels, then go and roast them on a fire. The sun would be setting while we ate and he’d always start in on me after. I asked him about it once. He told me that we’re at our most honest on a full stomach.” He chuckled, a somber melody in the darkness. “If that’s the case, Bombur’s the most honest out of us all.”

She suppressed a smile, thinking of the rotund dwarf always snoring in his cell the many times she had passed him. It was like clockwork; the only time that he bothered to rouse himself was when the guard came up for meals. Tauriel had begun to tell the time of day that way in the dungeons, relying less upon the faint scents of morning and night that filtered in on the air.

Kili went on, though his eyes flickered with renewed life as he saw the change in humor within her own. “He told me a king is only as good as his word. That goes for all of Mahal’s children. To give your word is to pledge yourself, your honor. If you can’t keep your word, none of it matters. It’s easy to make many promises, but harder to keep them. He said it’s best to make fewer promises so that you can be sure of fulfilling the ones you do.”

Thorin Oakenshield’s stony face was indecipherable. It was difficult to imagine the sneering dwarf king that brooded in his cell raising his nephews to be noble and fair. Tauriel tried to imagine tenderness in his cold voice and found that her imagination was poor indeed.

“That is very wise,” she said. “I think the same can be said for all races.”

“I’ve only made two promises since,” he said seriously. “The one I made to Thorin—that I would follow him as my king to reclaim our home...and this.” He held up the stone for her to see.  “You asked what it was. It’s a runestone. My mother gave it to me so I would remember my promise to her.”

“What promise?” Her curiosity was becoming too persistent where he was concerned. She wanted to know more of his life. She wanted to know him, she realized with unsettling clarity.

“That I would come back to her.” He contemplated the stone, tossing it in the air once more. “She worries. She thinks I’m reckless.”

Tauriel could no longer stop the smile she had been holding. It bloomed across her face. “Are you?”

Kili tossed it again and shook his head emphatically. “Nah.”

The stone slipped his grasp and fell through the bars, making a sound like a bell against the iron. She stopped it from rolling over the ledge with her boot. She picked it up and examined it in the torchlight. Dwarvish runes were incised carefully into its smooth surface.

“Sounds like quite a party they’re having up there,” he said, gazing past her up through the shadowy hive of cells.

The stars were at their peak of brightness. A scant glimmer of light had begun to reach even the lowest dungeon levels. Their spectral glow bathed Tauriel in a serenity that she rarely felt. “It is _Merethen_ _Gilith_. The Feast of starlight. All light is sacred to the Eldar. And wood elves love best the light of the stars.”

For a moment she felt the old longing flare from her childhood, the desire to revel beneath them with Legolas and his Sindarin relations. If her family had survived Tauriel would have chosen this night to be with them among the Silvan clans, watching and listening to the faint warmth of music and dancing that reached them from among the trees.

“Why are you not there?”

His question brought her back, spinning her thoughts into an invisible thread that tightened around her. “I am unwelcome.”

He gaped. “But you’re the Captain of the Mirkwood Forest Guard!”

“Do you mind if I abbreviate?” she asked, arching a brow.

He smirked. “If you’re going to make a joke you can’t use mine. You’ve got to come up with your own. Those are the rules.”

“I will remember,” she said, lips twitching.

A comfortable silence descended as the sounds of feasting continued to float down amid the shafts of starlight. She wished it was still the same with Legolas. It hadn’t been that way for some time with her friend. Even before the arrival of the dwarves. She couldn’t help but sorrow for its loss and the growing sense of distance that lay like a collapsing bridge between them.

“Tell me,” Kili said, breaking the spell of quiet. It made her feel like a ghost come to keep him company. “Why aren’t you welcome?”

She felt the familiar shame rise along her neck. “I am a Silvan Elf. Low-born among my kind. Only Sindarin Elves are allowed to partake of the feast.”

He snorted loudly. “What’s the difference? Durin’s folk are welcome in every hall, especially that of the King. We’re all the same, none better than the other. The King is only there to serve his people, not be worshiped by them.”

She sighed. “It is not so simple among elves.”

“Isn’t it?”

Kili gazed at her, drawing out the sting of what she was like venom. How strange it was that he could make such a vital distinction seem so frivolous—so arbitrary. “Rank is not determined by occupation,” she said gently. “It is birth.”

“Mahal’s balls. You’re the best of them all,” he swore, as though it was as obvious as up or down. “They’re a bunch of robe-wearing pointy-eared fools if they think otherwise. And besides—” he finished, undaunted. “I’ve never cared much for stars.”

Tauriel’s eyes widened. “Truly?”

Kili shrugged, as though it was something that he had grown up putting little stock in—as though she had pointed out the color of his stockings. _Did dwarves even wear stockings?_

“I always thought it is a cold light,” he said.  “Remote and far away.”

 _How could that be?_ “Do all dwarves feel the same?”

“Most of us prefer the glitter of jewels to the glitter of the heavens. Or a pretty lass,” he added.

Tauriel rolled her eyes. She had grown used to his flirtations and for the most part had learned to ignore them, though they still made her uncomfortably aware of herself. She let it pass and looked on him with growing astonishment. _How could any race not embrace the stars_? “It is memory. Precious and pure,” she insisted. How could she make him see?

The runestone was a slight weight in her palm, coaxed to life by his flesh and hers. It seemed to speak eloquently enough for them both. She handed it back to him. His fingers brushed hers for the second time since they had made their bargain. The same current of fire flowed between them, as though once ignited would now remain coursing beneath the surface.

“Starlight is memory. Beautiful and pure,” she said softly, thinking of a mother anxiously awaiting the return of her son. “Like your promise.”

The noise of the feast was winding down. Tauriel thought back through the years of her life, a life that seemed very long compared to his. She stepped away from the bars of his cell, wanting to share what she had known with him, a being whose heart would soon flicker out just as it had started to find rhythm with the rest of the world.

“I have gone wandering in the highest branches of the ancient trees of Mirkwood. I have been close enough that you could forget and think yourself wandering among the stars. There were times that I was sure that I have walked there with them sometimes…beyond the forest and up into the night. I have seen the world fall away. And the white light of forever fill the air.”

She turned, wondering if perhaps she had said too much, given away too much of herself; but there was only Kili’s face illuminated by a single torch and starlight, looking at her with a puzzling kindness.

“I saw a firemoon once.”

Tauriel's breath hitched and she immediately flushed at the sound, so intimate in the darkness. A firemoon was a rare pleasure. She had heard stories of them, but in all of her years she had never been fortunate enough to glimpse one. How strange it was that such a young dwarf already had.

Kili kept talking, enjoying his captive audience. “It rose over the pass near Dunland. Huge. Red and gold it was. It filled the sky.”

She kneeled down, lulled by his tale and the illusion that for a moment there was no iron that existed between their lives. Here, now, in this fragment of time, he could be Kili and she could be Tauriel. Not prisoner and captive, dwarf or elf; they were beyond these things and had climbed up into the trees to walk among the stars together.

“We were in escort with some merchants from Ered Luin. They were trading in silverwork for furs. We took the Greenway south, keeping the mountain to our left. And then it appeared—this huge firemoon lighting our path. I wish I could show it to you…”

 _So do I_.

 

* * *

 

 

Someone was knocking at her door.

Tauriel had not chosen to sleep when she left the dungeons. Not that she needed to sleep often, though she did take pleasure in doing so. She had begun reading a small history of Erebor that Legolas had leant her from his library. It was written from its founding and the discovery of the mysterious gem that was said to bestow the rightful seat of power for the King Under The Mountain.

Kili had spoken of Durin’s Line to her before. Like Thorin, she learned that he and Fili were direct heirs of Durin, the first created of the dwarves by their fiery forge god Mahal.

She had just become absorbed in the book when the knock drew her attention. She tied her sleeping robe close about herself and opened it. Lieutenant Rochirion and her host of guardsmen blinked lizard-like at the sight of her, as though they had never seen her without armor. She realized after an awkward pause of rustling fabric and the shifting of feet that they hadn’t. They looked as if she were tucked away somewhere else, desperately combing their eyes about the small room in search of her. As Rochirion spoke she felt something turn to ice in her stomach.

“Captain you must come quickly—the prisoners have escaped.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Where is the keeper of the keys?” 

She rapidly donned her tunic, leggings, and armor. If Rochirion and the guardsmen had not been watching in awestruck horror as she stripped, turning and averting their eyes, she would have been thoughtless of asking them to. Preservation of modesty was the least of her worries.

Aglaradan rushed up from the wine vault, panting to keep pace with her strides. He was wild about the eyes from a night of drinking, hair mussed on one side, the imprint of a plate creased into his forehead. The keys dangled from his hand. “I have them! They never left my sight, I tell you—I don’t know how they got out!”

“It does not matter now,” she snapped. “We must find the prisoners or Thranduil’s Winter will be a blizzard.”

The guardsmen traded looks. Thranduil’s cold-burning temper was infamous, coined ‘Winter’ as a rueful joke among them. All knew well enough that no pain was too great in risking to avoid His Majesty's wrath. If Winter was bad, news of the dwarves’ escape would only make it worse.

“We will go ahead. Aglaradan, send for Legolas.” she ordered. It was a testament to his panic that in this not even he hesitated in obeying.

“This way,” she barked. “ _Asca_!”

 

* * *

 

 

Tauriel divided up the guards, sending one party racing off through the forest to intercept the dwarves in case they had already made it aboveground. She took the second and flew down through the dungeons and toward the vault, flanked by a winded Rochirion.

The door was closed as they approached, as though it hadn’t seen any activity all night; as though thirteen escaped prisoners hadn’t crept across its threshold before it had been flung open by a drunk and hysterical Aglaradan. 

She gave the signal and the guards kicked it in, arrows and blades at the ready. They flooded the vault, searching every corner.

“They’re gone, Captain,” her Swordmaster announced. “There’s no way out.”

Tauriel was mystified. She peered around the room wordlessly, searching for hair or bootprint, anything that might have indicated their presence. Her eyes narrowed at the wooden crates filled with apples and goods in the center of the room. Something was missing.

She whirled on the guard that oversaw the river shipments of wine. “Istafon? Did you have empty barrels that needed to be sent back to Laketown for refilling?”

Istafon’s face went pale. slowly, as if one mind, each of the guards gazed at one another and turned to stare at the outline of the cargo door that shown against the floor.

“This is going to be a blizzard,” Rochirion groaned. Tauriel agreed.

 

* * *

 

A thrush cooed in the distance. Tauriel cupped a hand around her mouth and delivered the answering chortle, drawing in closer.

The party she had sent ahead jumped down from the position they had taken in the trees while waiting to rejoin with them.

“Any sign?” she asked.

Her Third in Command shook his head. “They have either found clever hiding places or a way to move swifter than anticipated.”

“Much swifter," she said grimly. "They have taken the river. We must hurry.”

It was ingenious—Tauriel did not understand how the dwarves had known of Thranduil's wine vault or the door. She didn’t understand any of it. _How, how how,_ her mind chanted. How had they known? How had they escaped?

 _Someone let them out._ But who? Aglaradan still possessed the keys, and the keys were the only means of opening the cells. As resentful of her Captaincy as he and his father were, they were loyal. Even were they not, Tauriel could not see the former Captain willingly risking Thranduil’s rage to try and make a fool out of her with the most obvious finger pointing to his son.

Disbelief clawed at her, disbelief and something else. _Kili,_ she thought traitorously. He was gone. They all were.

 _It is better this way_ , a voice inside of her whispered. She thought of the bounty, of Legolas’ hurt and fury when she would have had to tell him. She could not have omitted the truth from him for very long.Thranduil’s face rose like a fog before her. _Liar._

 _But you know what he would have done._ Legolas would have taken them bound from their cells and left them out for the orcs to do what they wished with them.

She could not think on it now; they were free. Tauriel slowed, wondering why she was running so fast. She could lead the guards down the longer path to the dam and the river gate and hope that they wouldn’t notice, hope that the dwarves had got there and opened it before. She could call off the search.

_Let them go. Let him go._

The guard's footfalls were swift and silent through the underbrush as they dashed after her, dodging jutting roots and branches. Any minute they might be on them—any minute they might recapture them if she didn’t think of something.

A cry of surprised anguish exploded from her right. Istafon fell forward, the shaft of a black-tipped arrow shot through the center of his chest. Tauriel froze as another whistled through the air and pierced the ground in front of her.

A deep, guttural cry of hate shook the trees. A line of orcs leapt from their hiding places, the wicked curves of their blades blinding, reflecting white-hot slivers in the sunlight.

_“Plag tak poshat! Baj tak sorshul!”_

she had led them, weapons undrawn, straight into a trap. She had been so fixated on the dwarves, she had not thought to be careful, had not thought… _what have I done?_

“Captain, look out!”

Rochirion’s voice cut where the orc’s greatsword would have had she not ducked in time. It sang above the crown of her head, displacing the air. She spun and stuck her dagger between its ribs.

“ _Aaaaoooggg_!”

Two more were upon her before she could blink. They were fierce, but she managed to take them down, sweat and shivering exertion seeping out along her skin. They kept coming. She could not see where they sprang from. They used the cover of the trees to their advantage, turning their own knives against their throats.

 _“Lle baur na cin sen na rashwe na a lhedin,”_ Tauriel shouted to Rochirion, who defended beside her with one arm while the other hung useless and injured at his side. _“Lye baur na istas sut lhaew ennas naa.”_

He bared his teeth, delivering the killing blow to his adversary. “ _An in Gadorenas?_ ”

Tauriel helped him fight off another orc, monstrously large, the size of a small mountain with a deformed skull and rictus grin. Her hand slipped around its blood on her blade as she drove it back. “They are still under our protection."

Rochirion grunted and delivered the killing blow, skewering it up through its mandible and into its brain. “ _Nean lye ve lye mani lle shen na lle ona a norgontin. Mellonea! Na lle Nikerym! Suer Sen chu Duin!”_

The guards gave a rallying cry and made a tight ring around Tauriel, a band of leather and armor pressing in on her. They circled slowly, a spinning phalanx, never breaking rank as the orcs continued to erupt from the trees and advance.

When she saw no more coming, she discreetly fell to her knees in the middle of them and pushed through their legs, seeing Rochirion jerk his head in the direction of a wide-leafed fern nearby. He waited until she was safely behind it and out of view before giving the command.

“Now!”

They broke rank and attacked, falling upon the orcs. Tauriel tried to catch her breath. She could not risk running until they were out of sight.

She waited, heart pounding, listening as the pained cries of the guards and bellows of the orcs grew fainter, knowing she could do nothing, hating herself for risking their lives because of her carelessness. They were rallying, but it would not last. There were too many orcs. They needed reinforcements. They needed Thranduil’s soldiers. They needed Legolas.

 

* * *

 

 

Legolas looked like he hadn’t stopped running until he saw her. “Aglaradan said the dwarves have fled.”

“Yes,” she said, drawing a quaking breath. “They have hidden in barrels and escaped down river. Where is Aglaradan?”

“Relating the news to my father. Where are the others?”

Tauriel closed her eyes. It had happened so quickly; like a dream recounted in pieces. The orcs had appeared from nowhere. Her guards...she couldn’t think. Guilt was a luxury she didn't have time for. She had to save the dwarves. She had to save _him_.

“We were ambushed. The orcs took us by surprise and Rochirion and the rest took the brunt of the attack so I could pursue the prisoners. They herded the ones we didn’t kill up river. There are many of them. We need to send a message to your father. We need his guards.”

Legolas’ jaw tightened. His eyes kindled with fury. “There is no one to send word. We will have to hold them off ourselves from the palace until we can spare someone. The prisoners are a lost cause.”

He started toward the river but she grabbed his shoulder. “They have no arms. They are defenseless.”

He glared at her. “Let them save themselves if they can! We must save our own.” She stepped in front of him.

“It is not the King they are after.”

Legolas stared at her as if he had never seen her before in his life. “What are you talking about?”

Tauriel steeled herself and met his eyes. “There is a bounty on their heads. I am sorry, I—”

Incredulity rippled across his face. His mouth opened as if he would speak and snapped shut. It was betrayal and everything that she had feared and worse. He turned from her.

“We will speak of this later.”

“Istafon has been killed.”

He did not turn around, not even for that, though she saw the bowing of his shoulders. She continued, relentless.

“Would you have his sacrifice be in vain? Would you not protect those who cannot protect themselves?”

The distant sounds of battle up river could no longer be heard. Tauriel realized that she had stopped hearing them even before he had arrived. Terrible awareness sunk in her gut, and she prayed it did not mean the worst.

Legolas turned back then but did not look at her. He breathed deeply, a muscle trembling in his jaw. “I will do what I can to save the prisoners. But for Istafon and not for what you have said. It was not for himself that he met his death. He was unselfish.”

She had been ready for it. She deserved it, though she felt the full weight of the blow nonetheless—rending her in two.

He drew his bow and notched an arrow, making his way downriver and never once glancing behind to see if she followed.

“Know only this, Tauriel. Their lives are on your head. You have done this.”

 

* * *

 

 

The din of battle and orc-cry were vengeful spirits in her ears. Gannelwen’s fallen body and severed head shuddered like an open wound before her. Legolas gripped her arm, shouting in her face. His voice was muted, far away.

“ _Dartha an nin_!”

Chaos had broken loose downriver. It was worse than the ambush had been. Thirty orcs swarmed the banks. _He’s already dead_. Dread beat in her chest like a war hammer. They all were.

 _You have done this._ She had made her choice.

Legolas shot an orc through the eye. As it fell he barreled into it, using it as a battering ram to plow into another and take it by surprise.

That’s when she saw him. Ten paces away, staring in wide-eyed terror. Kili had seen her first. He wore the same expression as on the day her guards had captured him except now he was lying on his back, braced for undoing as the shadow of an orc’s blade swooped falcon-like toward him. It was not the orc that held it but death itself.

_You cannot have him. Not this one._

The fighting slowed to sluggish unreality. Sound and movement crawled. Tauriel’s vision narrowed, funneled to a single pulsating point. A cold fire coursed through her limbs. She shot an arrow through the heart of the orc. It fell back on the weight of its blade.

Kili’s eyes met her across the battlefield. Living eyes. That was all that mattered. They held hers, anchoring her, assuring her that they were in the middle of a violent dream that they would soon both wake from. Tauriel watched him drop something that had been coiled in his hand and rolled off the edge of the rampart step closer to the water. He was out of sight. _Stay where you’re safe. They don’t see you_. She could not stop for anything again, not even him. She drew her daggers and spun, cutting two more orcs down as they hurtled toward her. She looked up—

—and recognized the face that had drunk the death of all that she loved.

The Pale Orc knew her immediately. It had never forgotten. Neither had she.

“ _Azat ta! Azat ta golug! Mabas tak!_ ” it roared.

“ _Kili!_ ” His brother’s voice reached her beyond the clash of steel and the seething rapids. He had lifted the river gate.

 Kili flashed through her line of sight once more. He dragged himself over the lowest hidden step of the rampart and slumped forward, splashing into a barrel that rocked wildly downriver with the rest of his companions. Using her diverted attention to its advantage, a towering orc seized her and nearly cleaved her in half.

“ _Mabas tak_!”

“ _Sin athrad_ , Legolas!” She danced out of its grip and severed its ear. It screamed as she turned the tables, distracting it long enough to plunge her dagger into its belly. It crashed into the water and the river swept it under. She sighted Legolas’ silver hair flaring out behind him as he shot another arrow through an orc’s skull. He ran when he was free, jerking his head for her to follow.

They pursued the progress of the dwarves, shooting and impaling their way through orc flesh. Tauriel doubled backward, sweeping her blades in a circle as they leapt from the highest rampart wall. Legolas kept time with her. They climbed and jumped over Mirkwood’s border together, leaving behind the thickest cluster of enemies.

“Come!” he shouted.

The orcs spat a volley of arrows at the barrels. Legolas was nearer to the bank than she was. She sprinted after him, hurling herself into a tree whose branches suspended over the river, jumping from limb to limb to get closer.

She fired arrow after arrow, knocking orcs into the water, watching them as they drowned. Balin and Thorin were in the last of the barrels. Another orc took inspiration from their strategy and ran across a fallen tree that bridged the river, poising an axe over Balin’s white-bearded head. Thorin Oakenshield grabbed a floating branch, throwing it at the orc. It dropped into the water and its blade fell easily into his grasp.

The dwarves were efficient at taking weapons as they downed their adversaries. Dwalin got hold of an axe and chopped another tree that had fallen across the river that the orcs lined like a flock of birds, sending them to their graves. By luck or misfortune, Bombur’s barrel was spit out of the water onto land and rolled, bouncing across air and tree and stone until it landed and shattered around him. His legs and arms burst out of the sides with weapons in hand, providing a strange armor against the bombardment of orcs he cycloned his way through.

There was a fourteenth in their company—there had only been thirteen prisoners Tauriel had counted that they had captured. He was smaller than the other dwarves, a mere child. She could not make out his features from the distance. Where had he come from?

Legolas gained ground ahead of them and waited for the right moment.  “Cover me,” he shouted.

As Dwalin and Dori rode the froth past, he jumped from the riverbed and skipped across their skulls, turning and firing arrows at the orcs from his moving platform of cursing dwarf heads. Tauriel took the high ground and let loose her remaining arrows until her arms arched. He reached the other side of the river and killed the last of them. She let out a cry as he missed one and it raised an axe at his back.

“Behind you!” she screamed.

She watched, helpless, knowing he could not hear above the noise and thunder of the river. She was about to witness his end. Tears of rage and loathing hazed her vision. _He will die with my lie upon his heart_. She despaired, spirit raging against the inevitable as another blade milled through the air and gutted the orc not a hairsbreadth before it was too late.

Thorin Oakenshield glanced at her before settling back in his barrel. He said nothing. _A debt for a debt_. He and Legolas watched each other like wary chess pieces as the fourteen barrels grew smaller until they had disappeared from sight. They were gone. 

Tauriel ran along the embankment until she found a place to cross, hopping from stone to stone to where Legolas stood, staring past the horizon, the energy and exhilaration of battle fled from his body.

The whine of another bowstring being drawn pierced her ears.

She turned just as another orc took the former’s place.  One. Just one.  It strung an arrow and pointed it at Legolas. Tauriel shot her last as it fired, foiling its mark. The orc whipped its head around as she somersaulted toward it and brought her blade to its throat.

“Tauriel!” Legolas ordered. “ _Ato."_

"This one we bring to my father. _Sen pen nae heb cuin_."

 

* * *

 

 

“Out there in the vast ignorance of the world it festers and spreads. A shadow that grows in the dark. A sleepless malice as black...as the oncoming wall of night.”

Thranduil circled the orc Legolas restrained with the dagger. It growled, fixing its snarling hatred on Tauriel. Myriad tortures lurked within its eyes.

“So it ever was…so will it always be. In time, all foul things come forth.”

She and Legolas had gathered the rest of the guard up river and taken it back to Thranduil for questioning. Bodies of orcs littered the land between the palace and the river gate. The guard had been outnumbered but they had won. Tauriel sent up a small prayer of gratitude to whoever was listening. It had been miraculous that there were no more casualties; they had been fortune, though she knew that the outcome may have been vastly different had the orcs been targeting them.

 _Istafon_ , she grieved. _Istafon..._

_You have done this._

Thranduil was deathly quiet. Winter was upon them, and what a blizzard it was. He turned his eyes upon Tauriel, as though she had all the opacity of sun-dappled leaves.

“It is a tragedy that we have been surprised by this attack.”

_He knows._

Legolas was a statue of indifference. He restrained the orc that was kneeling at his feet, dagger to its throat. She recalled the betrayal in his eyes as he refrained from looking at her.

“Prisoners have escaped today and we have lost kin. How could this have happened, I wonder?”

He glided past her, scrutinizing her the way he would a termite that had eaten its way through his carven throne.

“Who is responsible?”

Her heart constricted in her chest. Legolas continued making a study of avoiding her gaze, as if she were not even in the same room. _You have done this._

 _Kili_ … _be safe. Be well._

If he and his companions survived and succeeded on their quest—wizened old Balin, sweet Ori, Fili, Bombur, as well as their resentful leader and the others she hadn’t a chance to know, what would be the consequences?

_What have I done? What have I set in motion?_

She hadn’t been able to do it. She had betrayed Legolas and the safety of her people with a lie. She had made a choice.

Thranduil seemed to know her suffering. He breathed deeply, savoring it as though it were an acquired vintage. Istafon was dead because she had not told Legolas of the bounty—because of an omission of truth born out of a desire to protect. But Tauriel had never meant it to be at the expense of her own people.

 _Was this what it was to rule?_ she thought. _Was this what it was to live honestly? Having to make a choice between the needs of the few for the needs of the many? To make sacrifices? To offer up shackled prisoners with wives, husbands, children, loves of their own so that they could protect and defend their own kind?_

 _Now you understand_ , his eyes said. _We are not so different._

The orc spat and hissed. Thranduil observed it like a token curiosity.

Legolas pulled its head back, letting the blade lick at the exposed artery. “You were tracking a company of thirteen dwarves—why?”

Tauriel recalled the fourteenth she’d seen in the river. She had not been mistaken. There had been another. But where had he come from? Who was he?

The orc gurgled. “Not thirteen. Not anymore.” Dread beat through her ribs as its laughter.

“A young one—the black-haired archer.” Bile rose in her throat. There could only be one that fit that description.

“We struck him with a Morghul shaft. Poison’s in his blood. He’ll be choking on it soon.” The orc fixed its attention on Tauriel, as though it was speaking only to her. It was impossible to tell if it sneered or smiled through its rotting gums and ruinous teeth.

The throne room grew smaller, enclosing her. Blood roared in her ears. “Answer the question, filth."

For the first time Legolas looked at her, a warning set on the forbidding line of his mouth. The orc lunged at her.

“ _Sha hat nes kon ta golog_!”

Legolas jerked the dagger as it struggled, digging it deeper into its flesh so that a scratch of black blood curdled along the edge. “I would not antagonize her."

Tauriel greeted the void within her heart, peering down into its mote of ashes. _Kili lay beneath the shadow of the orc’s raised blade. Her mother and father dead, burnt in the flames. Adanethael’s screams and silence on the other side of the door. Gannelwen’s body broken beneath the tree._

Her hand acted of its own will, unsheathing her blade for her. “You like killing things, orc? You like death?” She spoke to the creature before her and to another from long ago. The Pale Orc had been there. It had seen her and Tauriel had seen it. It had come back, still holding her sister’s head, kneeling in front of her.

“Then let me give it to you!”

“ _Far_!”

Thranduil’s command was a physical force that stopped her. The voice of the King had been ingrained in her to follow. Tauriel blinked down at her weapon as it hovered a breath away from the orc’s heart. It growled low in its throat.

“Tauriel, _aego! Kela si_.”

Legolas watched, saying nothing. _Betrayer. False one._

She averted her eyes and stepped back. She did not glance at her King where he stood, composed of ice in the middle of the throne, so confident that secrets would save them; that the cage he had built for them all would be enough to ward off the darkness.

 _No, we are different._ _I have not lost hope._

“I do not care about one dead dwarf,” Thranduil continued. His voice followed her, pressing chill fingers up her spine as she left. “Answer the question.”

 

* * *

 

 

Tauriel packed light. Water was unnecessary; it would be plentiful along the way. Five cakes of lembas and her weapons were all she needed. She swiftly cleaned her armor and sharpened her blades, gathering enough arrows until she could replenish them in the cities of men. The river would take them first to Laketown and they would have to journey by foot on to the mountain that lay on the other side. The orcs would get there first.

Legolas' face in the throne room haunted her. _He_ _knows you. You know him_. _He will forgive you_. She shut her eyes, struggling to bear herself up under all that had come to pass. If she had faith in anyone, it was him. He would come.  He would find her, he would…

 _It doesn’t have to be this way_. Not how Thranduil believed. They could all guard each other against what was to come—they did not need their boundaries, barriers, walls. They could find another way. Tauriel would save them; her people, the dwarves. They could save each other.

She plucked up the _Book of Erebor_ from where it lay on the small table and slipped it beneath her belt, covering it with the green folds of her tunic. It gave her the hope that she would see his grin again.

 _Valar keep him and grant me wings_. _I am coming._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The sun was sinking. The reek of slain orcs engulfed her nostrils. The stench of recent death was thick and nauseating. The guards would remain at the palace and remove the bodies in the morning. They would not be buried in Mirkwood. They would have to be carried outside the boundary of the forest, lest their marrow disease the soil.

Tauriel was alone. The grassy knoll that surrounded the stone ramparts housing the river gate was stained with slaughter. She had sat upon it just days ago. Now it was tainted; poisoned by death. She had seen the Pale Orc near one of the largest trees adjacent to it.

 _When we meet again, one of us will die._  

The forest was soundless but for a young lark that whistled. Tauriel found the spot where she had last seen him. The water was white and strong, cascading across rocks and the bones of the orcs it had claimed that day.

 _He lay on the ground here_ , she thought. She went to the lever that hoisted the gate and looked down at where Kili had rolled onto the lower parapet that rose just above the level of the rapids. There was something that lay on top of it.

Tauriel bent and picked up the necklace, uncomprehending. _He asked for the loose leather string from my bow and two locks of my hair._

The memory of his grin was a light before her. _No kisses three from a fair-elf maid?_

He had used pieces of the soiled blue cloth from his tunic. It was coarse cloth, but it had been a beautiful color once. It was beautiful still, even with dirt creased into the folds.

The chain had been woven with long strands of her hair with darker strands she recognized as his. She touched them reverently as a vice clenched within her breast. The chain was supported by the piece of leather she had traded him. In the center, the scraps of ripped blue cloth had been tightly coiled until it formed the shape of a flower.

 _Not a flower_ , she realized, caressing it and peering closer at the pointed edges. _A star_. He had dropped it. Did he hope that she would find it?

The strands of copper and ebony were a complimentary contrast, the humble cloth showing against the artistry of the weave. If he had given it to her, what would he have said? What would she have done?

 _I will ask him why._ _I will save him and ask him why._ The Morghul poison moved fast, but Tauriel would move faster.

She felt the reassuring weight of the arrows on her back, the blades at her hips. Doubt entered as an uninvited guest. _If I leave, I may never return. Thranduil would never pardon me for deserting, for disobeying orders._ The irony was not lost on her. _Perhaps I am more like Aglaradan than I thought_. The smile failed at her lips.

The trees wept at what they had seen that day. She could hear their sorrow in the leaves that shook and sighed with the breeze. She loved the land of her ancestors, loved it with all of its perils. It was her land, her life. All that she knew—could she truly leave it behind forever to save his life? Perhaps there would be others he would meet on the road who could help him.

_Men lack healing knowledge of dark magic. There will be no others to save him where he goes._

What was the answer? Here, when the final hour was upon her, Tauriel did not feel strong or certain. She was not brave, nor was she courageous. Could she really help her people? Could she aid the dwarves? _Valar help me. Show me the way._ She clutched the necklace for fear it would disappear as he had.

A wave of sensation overtook her suddenly, robbing her of her senses. Her knees buckled and the world tilted. White blooms of vertigo erupted behind her eyelids. Tauriel swayed forward and caught herself against stone, feeling the spray of the water reaching up for her below.  

_She opened her eyes. Kili lay on a table. There were two human children and three dwarves—Oin, Bifur, and Fili. He was lashing out, arms flailing, unseeing. The poison was claiming him, pulling him down into darkness._

_“Tauriel!” he wept, pain and terror drying on his cheeks. “Tauriel!”_ _He was screaming, a sickening rattle in his throat._

_I am here! She cried. She was, but he could not hear. She touched his face, but he could not see her._

_His body shook and all at once there was a terrible stillness. Clots of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. The black taunts of the orc in Thranduil’s throne room came back to her._

_Oin touched Fili’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Lad. There’s nothing more we could do.” Grief flowed down his face like the streams she imagined in the mountain kingdom they all sought to reclaim._

_“Another Prince of Erebor has fallen.”_

Tauriel coughed and swallowed draughts of air. She had been holding her breath, sure that she’d fallen in beneath the rapids. She stared, dazed and grateful to find herself still on the rampart wall.

She looked down at the necklace. The vibrant red strands shown in contrast to Kili’s. _This is impossible._ It should have happened when she was a child. It was too late. It couldn’t be now. It wasn’t supposed to be passed onto her. She was too old. She took after her _Adaienior_ in look only. Adanethael was the one the other clans whispered about—the one with the Sight. Not her. Not Tauriel of Mirkwood.

But the vision had been real. It remained, preying on her; Kili’s face contorting, the light and song of his life leaving him. She had not believed…not since the murder of her family. Yet she had seen it. She had seen his end.

 _He will die if I do not go to him._ She knew it with utter certainty; with everything that she was. There would be no one else to prevent it. His fate had been shown to her, as true as if it was a tale that had already been written.

_If this is a gift, take it from me. I do not want it._

“You cannot hunt thirty orcs on your own.”

Legolas crested the flat grey stones toward her.

 _You know his heart._ “But I’m not on my own.”

Fatigue and concern layered his face. “You knew I would come.”

She forced the vision away, letting it fall deep within the well of grief and mysteries that still burned unanswered questions inside her. Kili’s face settled there with the others—of Gannelwen, of Adanethael, her father and mother. _Not this time. Not this time._

“I had hoped. I did not know if you would forgive me.”

He shook his head. “You knew.” His silver hair rustled over his shoulders like the churning waters. He sighed. “Help me to understand you, Tauriel. The Valar knows that I want to.” His eyes pleaded.

 _He is lost_. Like she had been. Like she still was. But now there was something. Something more to become. A reason, a way. It had been there all along. It was there.

She had seen it.

“You do understand me, Legolas. More than you care to admit.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

She gazed levelly at him. “You agree with your father about as much as I do. You are not him; you will never be him, no matter how much you try to mirror yourself in his image. You are not weary of the world—you do not accept defeat.”

Legolas widened his stance. He did it when he came prepared to argue with her, to drag her back to reason. “The King is angry Tauriel. For six hundred years my father has protected you, favored you. You defied his orders, you betrayed his trust.”

 _Betrayed mine_. She heard the words. He had forgiven her, but they were there. The hard expression he wore belied the truth. A truth that said he was afraid for her. Afraid for them both. Of what this could mean. Hope stirred inside her.

She could not let him win.

“And has he not betrayed the trust of his subjects? Mine? Yours? Do not deny that you don’t feel it, _Mellon._ You know that he guards a greater fear than Erebor. What if he is making the wrong choice in doing so?”

Legolas’ eyes were a blue sea; his father’s breach of faith a rocky shore contained inside, as was the memory of hers.“That _is_ what he tries to protect us from. If there is a dragon in that mountain, Tauriel—if the dwarves wake it—”

“Then we shall stop them.” She felt her strength surge and realized that it had never left.

She went to him and took his hand, as she had done when they were still little more than children, peering at the lines, imitating the way her grandmother had read the paths in her hand as well as her sister’s. He had always asked her half-teasing what she was doing, though she would never tell him. He had sensed that it was something private and comforting to her, and he had allowed it because he had also been comforted by it, though he didn’t understand why.

Tauriel smiled sadly. “If I have learned anything from this, Legolas, it is that secrets cause more pain than they spare.”

She thought of Istafon with a lump in her throat. His was the one body that would be buried in Mirkwood, not left to fester with the others, but laid out and buried with honor. Even now, his mother and father were bathing him, preparing his funeral shroud. _You have done this._ Someone else had paid the price of this lesson for her.

His grip tightened in hers. She squeezed back and pulled away. “I could not do it, _Mellon_. I am sorry that I kept it from you, but you would have given the dwarves over to the orcs if you had known.” She saw him tense but he did not deny it.

“I never intended to endanger our people. But I do not see a difference between their lives and ours. Are we not them? Are they not us? Do we not share a common world, common joys, and common enemies? We are at the same risk of falling to darkness as they. We cannot seal ourselves in a tomb and hope for life. There is more evil simmering in the world than the destruction that may lurk within that mountain. Something is coming—a greater threat than we have ever faced. I know you feel it, _Mellon_. I know you.”

He looked past her toward the horizon. “ _Unglo a namie. Naego haunna kah_ ,” he urged one last time, divided within himself.

“ _Uuho ha ne kan. Eethon or he ni kee kan dihena me_.”

_I know you._

The sun was beginning its slanting descent, but it would be hours until nightfall. There was still time.

“The King has never let orc filth roam our lands, Legolas. Yet he would let this orc pack cross our borders and kill our prisoners.”

“It is not our fight.” She felt it sigh out of him—the last of his rationalizations, his circular arguments, his fear; his weakness. _Let it go, Mellon._

The way was before them; singing sweetly through Tauriel like an instrument. She could see it now, even if he was not sure. Nothing was. But now, the words came without effort; signs that pointed, directing them toward a destiny that, though paved with darkness, promised a light that was worth the crossing.

“It is our fight. It will not end here. Don’t you see? With every victory this evil will grow. If your father had his way we will do nothing. We will hide within our walls. Live our lives away from the light, and let darkness descend. Are we not part of this world? Tell me, _Mellon_. When did we let evil become stronger than us?”

She stared at him in silence, waiting.

Legolas' blue eyes sparked to life like the reflective surface of the river.

“It seems I have lost our argument.”

“You had to sometime.”

“True,” he said, wry.

The waning sun illuminated his face; the smile that had never been allowed at last showing through. Tauriel had waited long to see it. Yet there was another’s she looked forward to now that sent a sharp ache lancing through her heart. 

_Kili…I’m coming._

“Let’s go prevent your blasted dwarves from doing anything stupid,” Legolas said, gazing out at the golden rays that embraced the valley and unknown that awaited them. “And save Arda.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> (Sindarin)
> 
> Asca (Hurry!)  
> Istafon (Masculine. Name means “River Soldier.”)  
> “Lle baur na cin sen na rashwe na a lhedin.” (We need to get them to retreat to a clearing.)  
> “Lye baur na istas sut lhaew ennas naa.” (We need to know how many there are.)  
> “An in Gadorenas?” (And the prisoners?)  
> “Nean lye ve lye mani lle shen na lle ona a norgontin. Mellonea! Na lle Nikerym! Suer Sen chu Duin!” (Then we will do what we can to give you a distraction. Friends! To your Captain! Drive them up river!)  
> “Dartha an nin!” (Stay with me!)  
> “Sin athrad, Legolas!” (That way, Legolas!)  
> “Ato!” (Wait!)  
> Sen pen nae heb cuin.” (This one we keep alive.)  
> “Far!” (Enough!)  
> “Tauriel, aego! Kela si.” (Tauriel, go! Leave us.”)  
> “Unglo a namie. Naego haunna kah.” (Come back with me. He will forgive you.)  
> “Uuho ha ne kan. Eethon or he ni kee kan dihena me.” (But I will not. If I go back, I will not forgive myself.)
> 
> (Black Speech)
> 
> “Plag tak poshat! Baj tak sorshul!” (Cut them down! Make them suffer!)  
> “Azat ta! Azat ta golog! Mabas tak!” (Kill her! Kill the she-elf! After them!”  
> “Mabas tak!” (After them!)  
> “Sha hat nes kon ta golog!” (I do not speak to dogs, she-elf!)
> 
>  
> 
> Hi guys! I decided to post a longer chapter than usual this time. That's the good news. The bad news is that this is the final chapter for the first installment of this series. The next installment still needs to be written, so I will be doing that for the next month. *hides behind a dartboard* No worries, a month will be up before you know it. I prefer to write the installments for my series ahead of time, that way I can relax and just do some revisions and put up the chapters every two weeks without racing to get them posted. 
> 
> Again, I want to say a huge and resounding thank you to all the people who have reviewed and left kudos and have supported this fic. You're all awesome. This is a great, tight-knit fandom, and everyone has been very helpful and kind.
> 
> On that note, the next series installment will be titled "Second Sight." It will chronicle the events from the end of The Desolation of Smaug to the Battle of The Five Armies (and possibly beyond...? you will just have to see. *wink wink*) If anyone is interested in creating more fanart for this series, or even compiling a soundtrack, I think that would be bloody awesome and fantastic. I'd love to see that happen. Just an idea, if anyone is interested...anyone at all...
> 
> Thanks so much! See you next month :D


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